Stowaway is just a bunch of useless space junk

Avoid Toni Collette's Netflix film at all costs.

• Toni Collette! Anna Kendrick! Daniel Dae Kim! Space! Rocket ships! More space! I was super excited to finally sit down and watch Stowaway, Netflix’s acclaimed big budget space opera that debuted on the streaming service recently. But now I’ve seen it, I’m here to tell you to avoid it. Holy wow it’s bad. Here’s why. Let’s go…

Toni Collette wants off this ship.

I wanted the rockets to splutter and fail on take off.

I wanted a few major panels to fall off and disappear into the ether. 

I wanted Daniel Dae Kim to get a flesh-eating virus caused by foreign antibodies, then begin infecting other passengers, turning them into giant, disgusting monster caterpillars. 

I wanted a mutha-flippin’ alien to burst out of someone’s stomach.

I wanted someone to get sucked out into space.

I wanted action, tension and drama. I wanted something, literally anything, to happen.

But not much did. 

Stowaway is a void, a black hole, a giant head rush of nothing. It just sits there like a bunch of useless space junk, floating aimlessly around space. 

Haven’t seen it? Here’s the trailer. Don’t watch any more than this…

It shouldn’t be like this. Stowaway has a big budget, major stars like Toni Collette (love her!), Daniel Dae Kim (love him!) and Anna Kendrick (meh), and its writer and director Joe Penna has made many great movies, including 2018’s Arctic.

This is his biggest film yet, by a long way. He’s got his biggest budget, his biggest stars, and, probably, his biggest audience. 

And he blew it.

Look, I’m not going to spoil anything about the movie for you here. This weekend, if you’re bored, you’re on the couch, you have two hours to kill and your Netflix algorithm feeds you Stowaway, you’ll probably start watching it. 

But this is not your average sci-fi space extravaganza. It’s so slow. It’s like a cut-price Gravity. It’s like Aliens without the aliens. It’s like Days of Our Lives set on a space ship.

Anna Kendrick, lost in space.

The dialogue is so dull. All Daniel Dae Kim’s biologist David Kim does is obsess about plants. At one point, Anna Kendrick’s Zoe Levenson embarks on an eternal childhood story while talking to a character preparing to commit suicide, apparently trying to bore him to death instead.

Toni Collette looks so sad to be there, all of the time. She’s one of the best working in Hollywood today, but even she appears to be pining for the Hereditary house - and that’s really saying something. That place is terrifying.

Perhaps Stowaway’s sad storywould make sense if it was shot under extreme Covid-19 conditions. Characters barely touch, rarely sit next to each and often talk from several metres away. They’re all astronauts, so are suited up and protected in many shots. 

If you spotted a face mask dangling from a hook in the corner of a scene, ready to be returned to a highly-paid actor’s face after the director yelled ‘Cut!’, you wouldn’t be surprised. 

Yet, it wasn’t. Stowaway has a $US10 million budget andwas shot before the worldwide pandemic broke out. Unlike all these other claustrophobic films about isolation we’re getting, like Oxygenand Ascendant, Stowaway has no excuses. 

It’s just a bad film.

And that’s all there is to it.

Five things you need to worry about this weekend…

• You have plenty of new albums to sink your teeth into over the next three days, including J Cole’s The Off-Season and The Black Keys’ bluesy newbie Delta Kream. But my pick is the sublime Frankenstein-pop of Daddy’s Home, from St Vincent…

• If you’re not already watching Waita/Anthems, you’re missing out on something special. The TVNZ OnDemand series tells the stories of Kiwi artists Bic Runga, Hollie Smith, Melodownz and others as they attempt to re-record songs in te reo Maori. For some, that’s no easy achievement. (Watch it here)

• Skip Stowaway and watch Oxygen this weekend instead. The ultimate story of isolation, it’s about a woman who wakes up in an oxygen chamber and can’t get out. It’s from Alexandre Aja, and has received pretty great reviews, with a whopping 94 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (Watch it here)

• Chris Rock’s reboot of the Saw franchise, Spiral, is in theatres this week. Ugh. No. What next? Bring back Hostel? No thanks. Instead, if you want to get out of the house for two hours of escapism, I’m kind of keen to see how Angelina Jolie fares in her big screen return Those Who Wish Me Dead. About time, Ange.

• If you’re keen to go down to the woods today, Resident Evil Village is the latest game in the horror series and has been released to pretty great reviews. There are still legions of fans for Resident Evil - I’m one - and I’m keen to sink my teeth into another horror-fest. (Out now for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S&X)