chris autio

I haven’t encountered a thoroughly unnerving scary series/movie since The Orphanage. Acting, filming, soundscape, balance of leap-of-faith threat to detectives’ work is remarkable. Credibility of great actors and the plot’s mysterious circumstances surge this story into a terrifying realm.

A forced sense of dread befuddles a group of college students seeking the travel bug. Their lack of intelligible conversation is matched only by the mutterings of commune members from high up north. Oh, have they found nirvana! Too bad their graves have already been dug, ‘cept for one lone lassie, beflowered as their dancing queen.

Beyond great acting by Pitt, the visuals were fairly stunning. While it wasn’t very clear ..nor does it diminish the plot...how “antimatter” was disrupting life here on Earth, Ad Astra has many strong cultural comments regarding the human race: there will always be war, commerce always follows exploration, and, most evidently, how difficult it is to untether ourselves from our family and those to whom we are devoted. Ad Astra is beautifully filmed with an engaging soundscape, filmic references to Kubrick’s 2001 and even Road Warrior! The ONLY goofy scene is Pitt’s defending himself using an aluminum sheet against a barrage of Battlestar Galactica rocks in the ring of Neptune.