"Stowaway"

2021  1h 56min Starring Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, Daniel Dae Kim, Shamier Anderson, 

I love well-done sci-fi dramas, and this certainly qualifies. As the title suggests, it's about a stowaway, albeit an accidental one, on a two-year mission to Mars. Shortly after takeoff, the three-person crew discovers a young engineering student inadvertently trapped on their ship. The mission was initially only supposed to take two astronauts, but with a great deal of paring down the weight aboard the vessel, they decide they can accommodate a third scientist. A fourth person puts them at great risk. When their oxygen-converting unit is damaged beyond repair, the crew desperately scrambles to figure out a solution. The film is well shot and you really get a sense of the confinement and claustrophobia aboard the craft. Adding to the feeling of isolation is the way their communication with mission control is depicted. All their conversations are filmed from their perspective--you don't hear the other end of their one-way conversations. As you'd imagine, it's a pretty intense drama that will keep you riveted until the final moments of the film. 

4 out of 5 stars