Jess Varley’s feature debut, The Astronaut, is captivating science fiction that delivers efficient extraterrestrial chills—until it’s not. We love an ambitious genre-bender and fearless storytelling, of course. Kate Mara is a fantastic leading talent and has stalked the horror genre going back to 2005’s Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. There’s so much about The Astronaut that works despite its ominous yet familiar tale about otherworldly terrors, but the third act is a massive unraveling. The whiplash, the digital effects, the tonal abandon—it’s a mess.
What Is ‘The Astronaut’ About?

Image via SXSW

Mara stars as NASA astronaut Sam Walker, who’s just crash-landed home from outer space. Everything was fine except for a strange puncture in her capsule and shattered visor. Her father by adoption, General William Harris (Laurence Fishburne), sets her up in a mansion safehouse for monitored testing while she reacclimates to Earth’s atmosphere—but Sam doesn’t feel safe. Maybe it’s the bruise spreading over her wrist, or the sensation that something’s paying midnight visits. Sam knows that if she admits the lingering consequences of her first mission—hallucinations and injuries—she’ll be grounded indefinitely, so she suffers through the side effects, hoping they’re all in her head.
At its best, The Astronaut traps Sam in fits of nightly paranoia that echo alien horrors we’ve seen aplenty. Even better, they’re serviceable. As Sam investigates noises outside her gigantic fish tank windows, we catch shadowy glimpses of this slender, agile figure in the distance. It reminds me of a shrunken-down “Clovie” from Cloverfield, four-legged with stretched-long appendages. The entity is unsettling from afar, thanks partly to David Garbett’s cinematography. When darkness falls and Varley focuses on scary tension, everything’s running smoothly.
Then Garbett’s camera catches Sam’s pursuer up-close (added in post-production) and momentum crashes to a halt.
The Effects and a Late Story Choice Bring Down ‘The Astronaut’

Image via SXSW

The digital effects in The Astronaut are flat-out disappointing. Varley makes the mistake of introducing the speckled-with-neon alien during a blatant ripoff of Jurassic Park’s kitchen raptor sequence, which is A Choice. If your computer-generated alien can’t outshine pixelated dinosaurs from 1994, that’s probably a poor comparison choice. From this moment on, The Astronaut is in a nosedive. The mood is shattered, but it gets worse. Whatever shivery horror-forward chills might have been running up your spine immediately vanish. Suddenly, Varley pursues E.T. parallels like someone had just switched the channel.
Varley’s late-stage storytelling pivot is something The Astronaut cannot survive. The movie’s DNA rewires abruptly, giving us no time to brace for impact. Since this isn’t a spoiler review, I won’t reveal what happens—but I so badly want to because there’s no possible way to understand how wildly this movie flies off the rails without doing so. Varley’s fierce approach to aliens and cicadas banging on glass as Sam hides in her Pentagon-funded fortress is neutered on the spot. Seeing the alien in full view and everything that comes after raises question after question—it’s a horrendous miscalculation.

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There’s nothing Mara can do at that point. Her portrayal of Sam Walker isn’t the problem. She bobs and weaves with the story’s swerves as best she can, bouncing between survival fears, conspiracy investigations, and then schmaltzy family values that divert the last act. Gabriel Luna draws raw emotional pains from Mara’s performance as Sam’s husband, currently grappling with his wife’s unreliable schedule. Mara wrestles with the elite honor of being an astronaut because it might drive away her family, while also keying into the primal thrills of encountering whatever lifeform might have followed her from above. It’s a role that requires flexibility and adaptation to changing scenarios, which Mara accomplishes—until the film leaves everyone behind.
The Astronaut has sky-high ambitions that go up in flames during the home stretch. Everything’s chugging along fine, then the tone implodes, and Varley’s command over scenes disintegrates. I haven’t seen a movie shoot itself in the foot like this in a wee bit, and that’s a shame. Varley’s talents as a director are evident for the first half at least, but after that, The Astronaut becomes a head-scratcher. What should be endearing and funky hits like PlayStation 3 cut-scene graphics, botching the landing of this otherwise slick slice of science fiction comfort food.

The Astronaut

The Astronaut suffers from a catastrophic final act and shoddy digital effects that torpedoes an otherwise serviceable sci-fi thriller.

Release Date

March 7, 2025

Runtime

90 minutes

Director

Jess Varley

Writers

Landon Sigrest

Pros & Cons

Kate Mara is innocent.
Look, it tries something out there that deserves respect.
Some nifty thrills in the first half.

The digital effects are a mood-killing ?woof.?
What?s tried at the end shares no connective tissue with the prior two thirds, making it an almost impossible pill to swallow.
Tone and tension crater out of nowhere, making for a failure of a climax.