Stowaway

Penna and his co-writer Ryan Morrison handle this existentially challenging material with grace, and Kendrick, Collette, Kim and Anderson deliver equally impactful, intense performances.

If you can buy the film’s unlikely core premise, you’ll be rewarded with persuasive speculative fiction in all its other aspects. Penna and company make it easy for audiences to do that, while putting four people whom they’ll come to really care about through all kinds of hell.

Joe Penna knows how to make a movie that holds you without being pushy about it. His voice as a filmmaker comes through, even in a genre as studded with commercial tropes as this one.

It’s more competent than inspired, however, with skillfully shot action but not much in the way of bold choices. It’s compelling enough while it lasts, but all but guaranteed to vanish from memory the instant the credits roll.

The makings are all there for a fascinating character study, which Stowaway more closely resembles than a sci-fi thriller. But the fact that we know so little about these people beyond a few basic traits makes it difficult for us to feel as emotionally invested as we should in their fate.

What ultimately hampers the film is that, once the agonising dilemma is introduced, the script quickly becomes a standard survival-in-space saga, recalling everything from Gravity to The Midnight Sky. The performances are nicely modulated, though, resisting the story’s inherently melodramatic qualities and instead focusing on trying to solve the problem at hand.

By paring their story down so much, the filmmakers only end up highlighting just how little it contains.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

There were real expectations for this one. Stowaway has the kind of premise that hooks you immediately: space, confinement, an impossible moral dilemma, and a very small group of characters. It felt like it could be one of those compact, intense films that stay with you long after they end. And yet, something doesn’t quite get ****’s not a badly made film. On the contrary, it’s restrained, sober, and very aware of what it wants to explore. The problem is that it moves at a pace that doesn’t always work in its favor. There are moments when the tension should tighten, but it never fully does, as if the film relies too heavily on its initial idea and struggles to develop it over the entire **** approach is clearly more ethical than spectacular, and that’s appreciated. There are no flashy set pieces or grand space spectacle here. Everything rests on decisions, glances, and the psychological weight of the situation. The cast supports this intimate, claustrophobic tone well, keeping the conflict engaging, even if it never becomes truly devastating.Perhaps the biggest weakness lies in how the stowaway himself is handled. The dilemma is powerful on paper, but the way it’s dramatized ends up feeling somewhat forced and less human than intended. Empathy is discussed a lot, but it’s not always felt where it matters **** the story progresses, the film feels more correct than gripping. Everything is in its place, everything makes sense, but it lacks that extra risk that would make the journey truly worthwhile. By the time it ends, there’s no anger, but there is a certain emotional coldness, as if something essential never quite came through.Stowaway isn’t a flat-out disappointment, but it does promise more than it ultimately delivers. Thoughtful, well-acted, and interesting, yet too restrained to leave a lasting mark.

Good design of the spaceship, but the stupidest possible decisions of the astronauts living there

Stowaway is a second-rate sci-fi thriller. The film can literally be viewed from the trailer. Weak cast, budget of the picture and straightforward boring plot. The whole film only tries to seem like Sci-Fi, but the dullness of some plot twists shows that this is more of a sitcom

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