‘Sputnik’ Review: An Immersive, ‘Alien’-Inspired Russian Sci-Fi Thriller
Tomris Laffly As the cinema of celestial brutes and space-set horrors goes, Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic “Alien” still retains a gold-standard status among its kind, continuing to lend its DNA to various sci-fi quests beyond the atmosphere. The latest film to ingest a piece of its eerie spirit — albeit, with varying degrees of success — is “Sputnik,” a tense genre exploit by debuting Russian director Egor Abramenko.A claustrophobic character study with gripping set pieces, serviceable spatters of gross-out B-movie gore and plenty of red-lit corridors, “Sputnik” doesn’t quite deliver upon the juicy potential of its paranoia-induced Cold War-era backdrop.