2025 has been a bad year for movies, I’ve now lost count of the zero-star movies I’ve reviewed, and that doesn’t include the ones I haven’t reviewed. Well, dear Outposter, today is another zero star movie, The Astronaut.
There will be spoilers later, but I’m doing you a favour, so you don’t have to watch this garbage.
The Astronaut stars Kate Mara, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Luna, Ivana Milicevic, and Macy Gray. Jess Varley directed and ‘wrote’ the movie, I use the term wrote very loosely.
The Story
Surprisingly, there is a story that runs through this movie.
When an astronaut crash-lands back to Earth, a General places her in quarantine for rehabilitation and testing. As disturbing events unfold, she fears that something extraterrestrial has followed her home.
I’m only going by memory here, because it’s not like I’m going to watch it again to get any of the major details correct.
Captain Sam Walker (Mara) crashes back to the ocean, having returned from a space mission. She seems fine, but is suffering from a concussion and a few minor injuries. She also sees things floating, which is explained as ‘zero gravity hallucinations’.
She’s kept in isolation, but sees her adopted daughter and husband. The husband, Mark (Luna), is as interesting as a documentary about the benefits of Excel spreadsheets for daily bookkeeping.
The relationship between Sam and Mark is in the same league as the one I have had with a cashier at a supermarket. We’re polite to each other, but have no deep connection. It was strange to see a ‘husband and wife’ so detached from each other.
Isolation
Sam ends up in a military safe house. When they get there, there are two armed guards on the front gate…remember that, because it needs attention later.
The house is safe and secure, has a panic room, cameras, and is state-of-the-art. Sam, our Astronaut, has been having some funny turns, so everyone leaves her on her own, no nurse, no guard, nothing. So, if she has a seizure in the night, they will find her dead in the morning.
During the night, there is ‘something’ outside of the house, so what does Sam do? Call the guards? No, she walks out to see what she can find; this is also because her mobile phone doesn’t work, somehow.
You know how in a horror movie, there’s a noise from the basement, and the main protagonist just heads right down there? It’s the worst cliché in all horror movies, well, Sam does every single one of those things.
Strange things outside…she goes out there with a torch. Don’t call the armed military personnel on the front gate!
It’s All Fine
This only happens in the second act The Astronaut, so nothing happens. In fact, this kind of thing happens all the way through the second act, including ‘something’ in the house, so Sam hides in the panic room.
No, wait, no, she doesn’t, it would be much better to hide in the drywall and secret passages in the safe house. And what’s worse is, CLOSE DOORS BEHIND YOU! OK, she’s freaking out a bit, but bloody close doors behind you, so you know, the alien cannot see where you just went!
The Ending – Spoilers
The Astronaut makes every stupid decision you can make in a ‘horror’ movie, but this is nothing compared to the ending. In the tagline, it says that she brought something back with her from space.
This isn’t true; basically, the aliens that are after her are her family from outer space. Yes, she’s been an alien from outer space all along. Where do you begin to unload this?
It turns out, her father, Fishburn, found her in an Area 51 incident. Aliens landed and ‘Sam’ got separated from the other aliens, i.e. E.T. She had a camouflage device, which didn’t so much as camouflage her, but also changed her shape and structure.
Speaking of which, it turns out Sam and her husband, Mark, couldn’t have children. Yeah, she’s an alien with no working ‘lady parts’, which Mark couldn’t figure out. I mean, he had sex with an alien and had no idea.
Also, her dad, General William Harris, knew she was an alien, but still let her train up to become an astronaut? We all know aliens are out to kill humans, but William seems to think it’s a good idea to let aliens just be human and learn all about our technology.
Overall
The Astronaut is one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year, and that’s saying something. The utter stupidity of every decision, made by everyone, is just beyond reason.
I don’t mind a little ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, but then there’s watching people just be unbelievably stupid. This doesn’t take into account the third act, which is possibly the stupidest ending of a movie I’ve ever seen.
A ‘camouflaged’, shape-shifting alien, is raised by a General in NASA, or the army, taught all of human understanding about our tech and even sent into space.
And she can’t have kids because she’s an alien, whom her husband had sex with many times. Did the camouflage even include a working vagina? I’m so creeped out.
This is one of those movies that film students should watch, so they can see how not to write a movie. The only thing The Astronaut can be used for is a bad example. It’s another zero-star movie for 2025.
