Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) and Christian Campbell (John Gallagher Jr.) are welcomed aboard the International Space Station by the other American, Gordon (Chris Messina), and a team of three Russian cosmonauts: Weronika (Masha Mashkova), Nicholai (Costa Ronin), and Alexey (Pilou Asbæk).  The six have a celebration as it is Kira’s first time on the station, but the revelry is short-lived when in the morning they discover that the station is stuck in low orbit and the communications systems are down.  Soon, the passengers realize that war has broken out on Earth and both teams have received secret orders from their respective governments to take control of the I.S.S. by any means necessary. 

Gabriela Cowperthwaite directs I.S.S., a sci-fi-in-location-only chamber piece thriller written by Nick Shafir and released by Bleecker Street Media. It debuted at Tribeca in 2023, but it was not made available to general audiences until 2024 as a January screen filler. It works perfectly as a winter programmer, but there is enough going on here that it is not entirely fair to factor it down as such, and with a minuscule marketing budget, it will hopefully find its audience when it eventually hits the home screens. 

The film is mostly led by DeBose’s Kira who is the newest member of the crew. As she acclimates herself to life aboard the station, Shafir gives all of the characters a bit of an edge about them, but impressively he also makes sure that all six scientists have easily defined traits in addition to setting up all the important details about the life support system and some of the various items in the living quarters that will come in handy later. It is a blunt application of Checkov’s gun, but it works well here because Kira is new to the station so Gordon is not stuck explaining to the audience things a veteran character would already know. With each new element introduced – the Kevlar lanyard, the hum of the circulation fans – we file them away in our minds, and with that front matter business quickly done away with, Shafir moves on to the drama. 

I.S.S. moves quickly, because after a night of bad karaoke and zero gravity shots, the team wakes us and are instructed that they each need to take over command of the station. On one hand, it is nice that Shafir does not drag out the premise, which is a smart move given the overall simplicity of the premise, but he does not interrogate it much, either. Once the command is given, both teams seem to forget their training as scientists who depend on one another to stay alive while on the mission and instantly begin to distrust one another. Eventually, enough of them take enough questionable action that it becomes well-founded distrust, but we never get to simmer allowing for well-intentioned actions to be misconstrued as something more sinister which would add some more dramatic layers to the story that is a little too straightforward and singular. There is little suspense because we always know a fraction too much about what is going on with both sides and each of the six crew members individually, and further, even when they do lie, the film dispels of their dishonesty often in the very next scene. There is nothing for us to work through with the characters and we are never under any false pretense for long. 

With that being said, I.S.S. is not without some twists of its own as the action plays out which does save the film from becoming bogged down. There is an incredibly tense sequence that occurs as Gordon is working to repair the down satellite, when back inside the station, editors Richard Mettler and Colin Patton have no less than three additional stories to balance as mistrust begins to infect the scientists. Later, Mashkova’s Weronkia has a very powerful moment where she gets to take control of how the story plays out and she ushers in a real sense of danger that helps keep audiences on edge with what they are witnessing. The second act is full of action which is surprising given the closed quarters, and as long as the bad science does not turn viewers off, it becomes a really fun film as the third act’s end game begins to come into focus. 

I.S.S. is a bit of a departure in theme and tone from Cowperthwaite’s previous works, but there is a confidence in her direction that translates to a solid effort. With no real tricks up its sleeve, it plays out more like a drama than sci-fi, but also more like a thriller than a personal drama so it becomes too watered down to really please any of whom it is marketed towards. By not incorporating any of the more fantasy elements, it becomes a boiling pot thriller that only ever flirts with an abandonment arc that would feel like it was torn from the pages of a Twilight Zone script and thankfully, Shafir is wise enough in his script to not get too entwined with global politics. It struggles a bit in what it wants to be, but with standout performances from DeBose, Mashkova, and Messina, I.S.S. is hitting above its weight class and still delivers an engaging and exciting trip to the cinema, even if it is a quintessential example of empty calorie filmmaking perfect for those cold winter matinees.