Sputnik

Egor Abramenko's first feature and one of the best-known Russian science fiction films of recent years. 1983, the Soviet Union. Of two cosmonauts returning from orbit one dies and the other survives, remembering nothing. He is held at a military facility on the Kazakh steppe, and a young psychiatrist, Tatyana, is brought in to work out what happened. It becomes clear soon enough that he did not come back alone: there is something inside him, and it comes out at night. The film's strength is treating the creature not as a horror element but as a resource. The army's concern is not saving the cosmonaut but making what is inside him usable, so the real danger is inside the facility. Oksana Akinshina plays Tatyana, Pyotr Fyodorov the cosmonaut and Fyodor Bondarchuk the colonel who runs the place. The Soviet period is rendered plainly and coldly: concrete corridors, greenish light, almost no exteriors. A good choice for anyone who likes creature horror welded to sober science fiction. For anyone wanting fast thrills, the first half hour is slow.