If you know me, you know that I absolutely
love some astronaut thrillers. I maintain love for Gravity, even if a lot of folks seem to retroactively hate it after
it got so much hype at the time. I liked Interstellar.
I loved The Martian, comedy or not.
I’m typically an easy sell on these movies, and it’s been a good couple of
years with one of them cropping up every October. It’s a good month for them;
October is an untapped resource for this specific genre because these movies
are too claustrophobic and tense for the summer, and too bombastic and
effects-heavy for the awards season. In the fall, they provide an
edge-of-your-seat thrill to those of us who can’t stomach the way typical
horror movies are shot/written/acted/regurgitated into cynical oblivion sometimes.
The movie in question, The Astronaut’s Wife, would definitely
do well in an October release. The elevator pitch is “Rosemary’s Baby with a
sci-fi angle,” as Johnny Depp’s aloof death-stare (re: possibly his bored look
while waiting for his haberdasher to arrive) is appropriated by an alien being
that is hell-bent on impregnating the titular wife, played with increasing
desperation by Charlize Theron. So there’s a tiny bit of space peril, there’s possession,
there’s an Omen-style conspiracy to perpetuate evil offspring to some sinister
end. And the end result is a movie without anything inherently idiotic about
it.
Except for its August release date.
New Line must have had some tepid test
screenings or an executive that didn’t care for the dailies being sent his way,
because the pre-Lord of the Rings
studio pushed out The Astronaut’s Wife
on Aug. 27 with no advanced press screenings and opposite a bloated and
imbalanced set of new releases and summer holdouts. Among them were the much
bigger dud The 13th Warrior, an
overblown period action set piece with too little action, and a hopeful return
from the Roberts/Gere pairing with Runaway
Bride. See? All over the map, that August was. The space-possession movie
was roundly dismissed by most critics, who decried the glacial pacing and
generic plot. Theron was given due credit for carrying a movie practically
single-handed, and so early in her career, whereas Depp was called out by some
for a lack of energy or subtlety.
Audiences agreed with the critics, and voted
with their pocketbooks. The movie opened at No. 9 to a $4 million weekend, and
grossed a worldwide total of $19 million off a ridiculous $70 million budget.
Keep in mind, that’s for a two-hour “meaningful glances” thriller with about
five minutes of space travel effects and a climactic showdown in an apartment
bathroom. Depp gallivanted back to his Tim Burton comfort zone, while Theron
languished in cheap garbage like Reindeer
Games and occasionally got to work in somewhat classier stuff like The Cider House Rules and Men of Honor. These days, Theron's name is on the shortlist for seemingly every single high-profile project from flashy action rides to somber character studies. She deserves it, because she's great. Depp is doing just fine, don't worry about him. He spends twenty grand a month on wine, or so the Internet keeps telling me. He'll be fine. But his career is starting to devolve into a rinse-and-repeat of big Disney flops, uninspired Burton leftovers, stupid hats, and Kevin Smith's Canadian horror cheapies. That's not a knock on Smith, really, but it's a real blow to Depp, who seems to be in his Island of Dr. Moreau phase of a lifelong Marlon Brando LARP session.
Screenwriter and rookie director Rand Ravich,
who got his start writing the script for a Candyman sequel, never helmed
another movie again. Instead, he’s been the creator of several fledgling
television projects, most notably cop-procedural “Life” starring Damian Lewis. That wasn't a bad show, either. I wish him well.
I want to stop for a moment and acknowledge
that 1999 was a strange year for thrillers and the horror genre. First off, the
October releases consisted of romance films and sports comedies, with only the
eye-rolling remake of House on Haunted
Hill representing spook-taculars for the entire month. That was probably
cagey on the part of the big studios, as the late summer of 1999 was dominated
by two of the biggest blockbusters of the year and they happened to both be
low-budget indie horror-thrillers: The
Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch
Project. Point in fact, when The Astronaut’s Wife was released on Aug. 27, M. Night Shyamalan’s lauded ghost story won the weekend with $20 million,
and that was the fourth week of its release. Similarly, the original found
footage crock-umentary even beat Johnny Depp as an alien, scoring $4.2 million
in its seventh week, bringing it up to a total of $128 million off a $6,000
budget.
So, extenuating circumstances to say the
least. But it begs the question, what would have benefited The Astronaut’s Wife
more? The August release in the middle of the Artisan and Miramax party, or
somewhere in mid-October versus Superstar,
Three to Tango, or Mystery, Alaska? I submit the latter
would have scared up a little more dough just on the basis of counter-programming. Or, rather, counter-counter-programming.
In the end, what really killed this movie was
not so much the release date as the irresponsible budget. In 1999, $70 million
was not a paltry sum to make a movie. That is why this movie rates as one of
the biggest box office bombs in recent decades. But if the movie had come out
opposite that truly wretched remake of an old Vincent Price joint, it might
have been recognized for its better features. It’s an entirely forgettable
film, and with the lack of fireworks anywhere and a 110-minute runtime it is
the very definition of a potboiler. But I forgive the lack of ingenuity put
forth by a first-time director/screenwriter who managed to seal in a lot of
effective mood and a standout performance from an actress the world wasn’t
quite ready for.