“In space, no one can hear you scream… your girlfriend’s name” could serve as a fitting tagline for Slingshot, a psychological sci-fi thriller centered on an astronaut grappling with intense romantic withdrawal during his journey to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
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| Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne in 'Slingshot.' Courtesy of Bluestone Entertainment Production |
Starring Casey Affleck and directed by Mikael Håfström, the film offers an intimate, subdued take that occasionally echoes Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and James Gray’s Ad Astra. However, Slingshot ultimately carves its own path, favoring narrative misdirection and plot twists over cosmic spectacles or emotional peaks.
The result is a B-grade thriller that’s elevated by a strong cast and a script with some clever twists, making it well-positioned to land smoothly on streaming platforms after its theatrical run.
Affleck stars as John, a member of a three-man crew aboard the Odyssey 1 (a nod to Kubrick), a deep-space shuttle on a mission to Titan to assess if the moon’s vast methane reserves could help tackle Earth’s climate crisis.
While the feasibility of this plan may be questionable, Slingshot isn’t preoccupied with the technicalities of interstellar travel or the practical use of methane. Instead, the film delves into John’s deteriorating mental state as he ventures deeper into the solar system.
John is plagued by intense loneliness, grappling with memories of his girlfriend, Zoe (played by Emily Beecham), whom he met at NASA (though it's referred to by a different name in the movie). Zoe appears in his dreams whenever he enters hibernation, which happens frequently throughout the film. Affleck’s character, perpetually in a semi-narcoleptic state, aligns with his typically subdued acting style.
Tensions escalate when John’s crew members, the authoritative Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and the anxious co-pilot Nash (Tomer Capone), start clashing after their ship is damaged during the voyage. Nash grows increasingly worried that the titular "slingshot" maneuver — a technique popularized in Christopher Nolan’s films — might kill them instead of flinging them from Jupiter to Saturn. Despite the risks, Franks remains adamant about completing the mission at all costs.
The plot may feel standard, but Håfström’s focus clearly lies elsewhere. Much like his work in the Stephen King adaptation 1408, where a man descends into madness within the confines of a hotel room, Slingshot thrives on its exploration of John’s memories, nightmares, hallucinations, and fragile psyche.
The director excels at placing unreliable narrators in claustrophobic environments that ultimately seal their fate. Strip away the outer space setting, and what remains is a psychological, one-set, one-character thriller that constantly challenges the audience's perception of reality.
Is John devastated because he left Zoe behind on Earth for this multi-year journey to Saturn, or is he too emotionally detached to care? Is Nash sabotaging the mission out of instability, or is he genuinely trying to save their lives? And why has Franks suddenly pulled out a gun to assert control? Even more puzzling: Who brings a gun onto a spaceship?
Early in the film, an impersonal female voice — the ship’s AI — warns John that the drugs used to induce hibernation may have some side effects. From that point on, the film’s primary focus becomes questioning whether we’re witnessing the effects of those drugs or reality itself.
By the time Slingshot enters its third act and hits the audience with a major, un-spoilable twist, we’re left wondering if anything we've seen so far has been real at all.
The film keeps viewers guessing right up to the final frame, and perhaps even beyond. But this approach comes with its own risks. If nothing is truly real, why should we care whether the crew aboard Odyssey 1 survives? And if Slingshot isn’t, at its core, about a broken romance, what is it really trying to say?
At its best, the movie captures John’s overwhelming sense of loneliness and despair during his bizarre journey, and Affleck portrays that mood well as he repeatedly cycles through waking up and going back to sleep.
Fishburne and Capone (who’s a talented actor deserving of more roles) also deliver strong performances, though their characters remain largely confined to the periphery of John’s internal struggles. The film maintains a pervasive sense of claustrophobia, emphasized by a shuttle design (courtesy of Barry Chusid, San Andreas) that feels like a shrunken version of the one from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What’s missing, however, is the grandeur and awe such a journey through space should evoke. For all the vast distances John supposedly traverses, he never escapes the confines of his own mind — and neither does the audience.
