Not often do sci-fi horror films hit a home run, but Egor Abramenko’s film ‘Sputnik‘ knocks it out of the park.
Released on August 14th, the film tells the story of: “Due to her controversial methods, young doctor Tatiana Yurievna (Oksana Akinshina) is on the precipice of losing her medical license. Her career may not be over, though. After she’s recruited by the military, Tatiana is brought to a secure science research facility to assess a very special case, that of Konstantin Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov), a cosmonaut who survived a mysterious space accident and has returned to Earth with a unique condition: there’s something living inside of him that only shows itself late at night. The military has nefarious plans for it. Tatiana wants to stop it from killing Konstantin. And the creature itself thrives on destruction.”
Despite being in Russian, the film’s dialogue flows sensibly and smoothly in sub-titles and even if you’re not used to foreign films, you won’t sense that the sub-titles detract in any way from the presentation and impact of the film.
Sputnik is everything that a sci-fi horror should be – gripping, intense, and terrifyingly brutal.
At this point, I have covered and reviewed so many IFC Midnight films that I have come to trust what they put out in the horror genre, and they rarely ever deliver a flop. Sputnik is another example of their stellar reputation of delivering hit after hit.
While 2020 has found all of us searching for memorable content during quarantine, there is no risk in ‘Sputnik’, especially if you’re a fan of sci-fi, horror, and ‘Alien’.
From start to finish and every moment in-between, Sputnik never drags, and always continues to beautifully weave a full and complete story, and is easily one of my favorite horror films of 2020 thus far.
