It's crowded inside that space ship with no shortage of challenges before it reaches Mars.
Stowaway
“What are we gonna do, ask him to walk out of the airlock?” Zoe (Anna Kendrick)
The problem in the entertaining Stowaway on Netflix is that an extra person hidden away on a two-year trip to Mars sucks out too much unplanned oxygen. Four occupants cannot survive even getting to the planet.
Although director Joe Penna likes the tech too much for my liking, the survival motif is still strong enough as only the Donner family could have known well enough. The three astronauts and the stowaway engineer, stuck in a claustrophobic ship originally made for two but tricked out for three, must decide who goes, as medical doctor Zoe simply states above. The tight ship symbolizes the slim options available to the crew.
No new sci-fi ground covered here, just the usual tropes of bungling outside the ship as they try to get oxygen from outer tanks to the sentimental stories of a child left behind and a scientist’s life work
destroyed. What it does have is a new take on an enduring human dilemma: What sacrifices must be made to ensure the survival of the species, not just the individual.
Additionally, at what point must the adventure of living stop in order to guarantee the survival of the many rather than the few. Not all of these themes are fully explored in Stowaway but enough to spark conversation. The ultimate conversation, however, is with ourselves: What would we do? What sacrifice would we make?
It’s comforting to see the commander of the ship a woman, Marina (Toni Collette), and the hero a woman (Zoe).
Enjoy an evening of release from the pandemic to the liberation of space travel only to realize we are still left with very human decisions no matter where we go.
“I need you to be mentally prepared for what's gonna happen.” Marina
Stowaway
Director: Joe Penna (Arctic)
Screenplay: Penna, Ryan Morrison
Cast: Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect), Toni Collette (Hereditary)
Run Time: 1h 56m
Rating: TV-MA
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
