Unfortunately I feel this movie could’ve been better than it was.

Stowaway follows a team of three astronauts who are heading out of the atmosphere for a two year mission, however once they’ve hit the space station they realise that they have a stowaway on board, a man who was not meant to be there and does not seem to want to stay because it means he’ll have spend two years away from Earth and his sister.

The stowaway, Michael, soon becomes a part of the team but this is when they realise that the space station only has enough oxygen for three of them and of course seeing as he was never meant to be part of the mission they have to make the hard decision to get rid of him.

And this is where my issues with this movie begin…

From the premise you could think we get a lot of time with each of the characters and they would be really fleshed out and we’d get to know them on a deeper level than just top line, but unfortunately I didn’t feel like we got that chance. Yes we got to know them a bit: Zoe is the doctor, Marina is the captain, and David is a scientist, but what else are they?

With a nearly 2 hour run time and the levels that this movie went to I would’ve expected to get to know these people way more and so when the event that happens with the oxygen running out does we feel so much more for them as an audience. We look at these people as fleshed out human beings and really feel for the situation they’re in and what they have to do, but unfortunately for whatever reason, I didn’t have that connection with these characters and really I didn’t care who lived or died.

During this movie a lot of time was spent with the characters, of course, but without much depth to them. They were doing their usual jobs and they were basically being colleagues, they didn’t seem like they were friends, and so when the situation happened it didn’t have much of a punch to it. It was obvious that they were going to want to kick Michael out because he was never meant to be there, and I feel if we learned more about Michael on a deeper level than the parts that we did, you really would’ve felt for the man more.

I really don’t know where the nearly 2 hours went with this movie. It seemed to go by so quickly which is obviously a good thing but it also meant that there wasn’t a lot of substance to it. It just seemed to keep going and going until we had the ending and I thought ‘oh is that it?’ The ending could’ve been so powerful, it was an absolutely beautiful moment and it could’ve been so good, but because I didn’t care too much about these characters because I didn’t really know them the ending didn’t have the punch that I think they hoped it would.

Stowaway is a great sci-fi film in terms of it looking gorgeous, having a great score, and having a storyline that could’ve been so much more, but unfortunately the actual movie let the genre down. I personally wouldn’t watch this movie again and I don’t know if I’d recommend it over other sci-fi films that have been so much better. I can’t help but compare it to The Midnight Sky because that movie really punched me in the gut and the amount of time it took to flesh out the characters really helped with the ending. I feel this movie could’ve had a similar story arc and the ending could’ve really tugged on your heartstrings.

What do you think of Stowaway?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding