Omar Epps | ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES

Ellie (Nia Long) and Marcus (Stephen Bishop) are recent empty-nesters who have sold up, left the city, and are starting a new chapter in a beautiful new home by the sea. Ellie is finishing up one last case before she’ll quit the firm and put up her own shingle nearer to home. But this one last case presents a wrinkle: her boss hires an IT “consultant” to help out (ie, obtain some emails in a less than legal way), and David (Omar Epps) isn’t exactly a stranger. Ellie and David went to college together, and it seems as though he may still be carrying a torch. A night out together turns a little steamier than Ellie meant so she puts an abrupt end to things, returning home to husband Marcus feeling more than a little guilty.

As if you couldn’t tell from the title, this is an extremely generic entry in the thriller-horror genre. It’s not called Happy Trust Exercise or Successful Long Term Relationship. It’s called Fatal Affair because David is obsessed with Ellie and he’s not going to let her marriage or indeed his own come between them. Obviously, the only reasonable way forward is a killing spree. Because the way to woman’s heart is stalking her family and murdering them in the face.

For any such plot to work, you’re going to have to accept that no one will answer their phones when they should, no one will call the cops when they should, no one will turn on a goddamned light when they should, and nobody remembers that David is a conveniently (for him) master hacker. Who is also oddly good at murder.

You know this movie. You’ve seen this movie. I mean, it’s brand new on Netflix, but you’ve seen a movie exactly like it at least half a dozen times. Its only saving grace is that Long, Epps and Bishop are very watchable, but when Long is forced by the script to break into David’s apartment even though she already suspects him of murdering his ex wife, there’s only so much she can do. These tropes are tired and the actors can try to inject them with fresh terror but this audience has seen it all and we’re not impressed. The only new ingredient director Peter Sullivan brings to the table is David’s murder hat, and even that’s nothing remarkable: it’s not a beekeeping veil or a Burker King crown or a half-ironic “60 and Sexy” trucker cap (which I only mention because my 6 year old nephew Ben recently inherited one from his great grandfather and wears it quite proudly). There’s nothing glaringly wrong with this movie, it’s just so overfamiliar that it saps all pretense of thrill right out of it, and a thriller without a thrill is just an er, a disappointing er.

In 2190, four American astronauts are taking their turn peopling a refueling station halfway between Earth and a moon of Jupiter where an outpost is being built. It’s a long shift: 10 whole years. Jackie (Kate Walsh) says goodbye to her daughter and joins captain John (Omar Epps), Richard (Angus Macfadyen), and Lisa (Miranda Cosgrove) aboard their space station, all of them in it for a very long haul.

The first year goes smoothly – the nobility of their calling, the novelty of outer space, yadda yadda yadda. The second one is fine: they dance, they play soccer, they hop beds. By the third year, the veneer has worn off and the mission is sprouting cavities. John in particular is having difficulty, experiencing night terrors that are increasingly violent and problematic. They don’t even make it halfway before the doctor on board, Richard, decides John is unfit for duty and they should pull the plug on the mission and return home. No one is happy with this decision, but in either case it gets taken out of their hands when something even more concerning happens. Experienced on board as a flash, Earth seems to have disappeared, had an extinction-level event, or at least that’s what happened to the best of their knowledge now that communication’s been cut. And if you thought they were going a little nutty before they were the last four humans in existence, guess what’s coming down the comet!

The movie takes places entirely aboard this refuelling station so we don’t get any outside knowledge, outside context, or any backstory on any of these characters. They’re astronauts, that’s all you’re going to get, and the qualification for astronauting seems to have diminished quite a bit somewhere in the next 150 years. I wish we had known them better, known their grief, known their motivation, known how a mother could leave her daughter to be raised by someone else.

Although there are some plot holes (inevitable in sci-fi, probably), director John Suits does a good job of cultivating tension. And you can’t deny the premise is a good one. It’s just a little wasted in this movie. They start rationing food and life support, but for what? There’s no one to save, nowhere to go. At what point is life not worth preserving? To be fair, the film does take a stab or two at fear of death versus fear of dying alone, and that theme is its own black hole. Bobbing around out in space, rational decisions already on short supply, nothing retains the same value. And yet some will always struggle to live on.

This isn’t the worst thing on Netflix. It isn’t great, but it may satisfy a craving for science fiction. Just know that some details will niggle and learn to let go. Or bring a calculator and prepare to double check some math.

Check out our review on Youtube.