Casey Affleck to Star in Functional Space Thriller

“In space, no one can hear you scream… your girlfriend's name” would be a good slogan for Slinga sci-fi psychological thriller about an astronaut who suffers severe emotional withdrawal during a trip to Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

Starring Casey Affleck and directed by Mikael Håfström, the film at times presents itself as an intimate and discreet riff on Christopher Nolan's novel. Interstellarand a variation of James Gray To Astra. But it's ultimately neither of those films, opting for a lot of narrative red herrings and twists instead of celestial wonders or emotional climaxes. The result feels more like a B-thriller that's been elevated by a good cast and a script with some smart moves, which should help Sling land softly on the conveyor belts after its theatrical release.

Affleck plays John, who is part of a three-person mission on the Odyssey 1 (shoutout to Kubrick), a long-range spacecraft traveling to Titan to determine whether the moon's vast reserves of methane gas could help combat the climate crisis. If that doesn't sound logical or even feasible to you, just know that Sling is less interested in the reality of interstellar travel, or what one might actually do with all that methane, and more in John's worsening psychological state as he travels deeper into the solar system.

The astronaut seems to have a severe case of space depression, haunted by memories of his girlfriend, Zoe (Emily Beecham), whom he met at NASA (although her name isn't NASA here). She appears in his dreams whenever he hibernates, which is basically every other scene. Affleck has never been a lively actor, and the fact that his character is in a state of near-narcolepsy for most of the film suits his style well.

Things quickly get out of hand when John's shipmates, the overbearing Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and nervous co-pilot Nash (Tomer Capone), start arguing with each other after the ship suffers damage in flight. Nash worries that the titular “slingshot” maneuver (for an explanation of how it works, see Nolan's film) will kill them all, instead of propelling them from Jupiter to Saturn. But Franks is all about completing the mission despite the risks involved.

It's pretty formulaic material, and Håfström frankly seems more interested in exploring John's memories, nightmares, visions, and faltering psyche. As in his Stephen King adaptation, 1408about a man who goes mad in a hotel room, the director has a knack for placing unreliable narrators in tight spaces that ultimately spell his demise. If you set aside all the space stuff, Sling It's basically a thriller with a single setting and a single character that constantly challenges the viewer's belief in what's happening.

Is John heartbroken over leaving Zoe behind on a multi-year journey to the far side of Saturn, or is he too emotionally closed off to care? Is Nash trying to sabotage the mission because he's also completely unstable, or is he fighting to save their lives? And why does Franks suddenly brandish a gun to try to restore order on the ship? Even better question: Who carries a gun on a space shuttle?

At the beginning of the film, a generic female voice, that of the machine, warns John that the drugs that induce hibernation can have some side effects. From that point on, the name of the game seems to be to ask whether we are actually witnessing those side effects or reality itself. At the moment when Sling enters its third act, which reserves us an important and unmissable twist, we wonder if Nothing we are seeing it is actually happening.

It's enough to keep the viewer on tenterhooks until the very last shot, and beyond. But it's also a thin line to walk on. If nothing is real, why should we care whether or not everyone on Odyssey 1 dies? And if Sling isn't it, after all, a story of a broken love affair, what is it really about? At its best, the film manages to capture the abandonment and desperation that John experiences on his long, strange journey, and Affleck does a good job of conveying that tone as he keeps waking up and falling back asleep, over and over again.

Fishburne and Capone (a solid actor who should be in more films) are also strong, though their characters aren't given much room to exist outside of John's internal conflicts. In fact, there's something downright claustrophobic about Slingincluding a shuttle (designed by Barry Chusid, Saint Andrew) whose interior appears to be a scaled down version of that of 2001: A Space Odyssey. What’s missing, finally, is the sense of scale and allure that such a journey usually brings. For all the millions of miles he supposedly travels, John never leaves his head, and neither do we.