Stowaway

Stowaway
Starring Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, Daniel Dae Kim, Shamier Anderson
Directed by Joe Penna

Serving as an analysis or portrayal of the traits of the character of an individual, the character study is a deeply profound, thoughtful issue, and several films have accomplished this brilliantly. Movies like "Locke," "There Will Be Blood," "Nightcrawler," "Raging Bull," and "The Machinist" shed light on the character of the character in the film, and gives them a layered, multi-faceted feel that hits the audience square in the heart. However, when a character study film is done poorly, it can result in a totally vapid, wasted movie that essentially exists to take up space and offer nothing more than an afterthought for the few who watched it. "Stowaway" is one such film.

Ship commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), medical researcher Zoe Levinson (Anna Kendrick), and biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim) are embarking on a two-year mission to Mars. Shortly after takeoff and as they're becoming acclimated to their close quarters environment in deep space, they discover something shocking - a stowaway, launch support engineer Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson), who was knocked unconscious and became entangled in the ship's carbon dioxide scrubber. Unbeknownst to Michael, the others learn that there's only enough air supply for three people, and Marina and David are quick to try to kill Michael so they could survive, but Zoe convinces them to wait ten days (how long they have until they lose all the oxygen) to come up with some solution that could save them all - but can it really be accomplished, or will one of them have to be sacrificed for the others to survive?

The concept for "Stowaway" looks good on paper: four people in the vastness of space with no hope of rescue find themselves facing the ultimate conundrum: one of them has to die in order to save the others. So who chooses to die? Do they get the choice, or will it be made for them? Could there be a miracle that will result in them all living in perfect harmony? A film like this should be filled to the brim with tension, suspense, and thought-provoking dialogues that adds weight to such existential questions, but what we really get is a film that really puts the "slow" in slow burn, in a way that's so slow nothing really seems to happen and there doesn't seem to be an urgency that should really exist in such a situation.

Typically in a film like this, there's at least one character that's insufferable, one that you really want to see die, and is usually the one who commits a heinous act that attempts to save his own skin but instead ends up in his satisfactory demise. You'd expect that to be Michael, who is the literal stowaway in the film, but once he's discovered he becomes a welcomed member of the group, and he doesn't offer any ill will toward anyone, except for the fact that he's in space while his younger sister is on Earth alone. There's no bickering or arguing, no hierarchy, no...nothing. They just accept everything and keep on keeping on (and I won't even get into the fact that it makes absolutely no lick of sense that Michael could've survived being essentially stuck inside a panel on the outside of a spaceship blasting through the atmosphere and into space where there's no outside oxygen).

There's absolutely no tension that's created, even during the life-altering news. Marina is thinking scientifically and also rationally, which is why she thinks Michael should die due to the fact that he was the one who stowed away (albeit not intentionally - which also I won't get into the fact that no one discussed how he ended up unconscious in a closed panel in the first place). David thinks Michael should die pretty much for the same reason, but Zoe is the cheerleader of the group, and thinks that everyone could survive - or at least they need time to figure that out. Then there's Michael, who seemingly is at peace with being the proverbial sacrificial lamb, but Zoe will have none of it. Even now, there's no pulse-pounding tension, but again there's nothing there.

"Stowaway" tries to also be a character film in attempting to delve into the lives of the four main characters, but we know as much about them at the end as we did at the beginning, which isn't very much. This is in no part due to the performances, as acclaimed veteran actors Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, and Daniel Dae Kim all give committed performances - as well as relative newcomer Shamier Anderson - but the problem rests with the bare-bones script that meanders its way slower than a snail's pace to its eventual conclusion, and you realize that you spent almost two hours with these characters and you don't really care for any of them due to the flatline script that came dead on arrival.

Seemingly offering a existential conundrum set in the vast nothingness of space, "Stowaway" should've been a pulse-pounding, dramatic character study about the inner demons and better angels inside us all, but instead meandered at an irritatingly slow speed to a very unsatisfying conclusion.

The Score: D