An astronaut movie with no space in it

Given this poster, you'd be surprised if you didn't get a little space in a movie called The Astronaut, wouldn't you? I mean, even just from the title, even if you didn't see the poster?

Well, no. Total bait and switch, it turns out.

I clearly had astronauts in peril on the brain after watching Sunshine on Saturday night, so on Sunday night, Easter night, I watched this 2025 film by director Jess Varley. (And no, I had not seen any previous work by her, even though that name feels familiar.)

It turns out it's actually about an astronaut's return to Earth, and what may or may not have come back with her from outer space. Which we never see. (We never see the outer space, not the thing that did or did not come back with her.)

Even in a movie like The Astronaut's Wife, a clear source of inspiration for this film even if that film is also not great, we get maybe 15 minutes of outer space stuff before the bulk of the movie takes place back on terra firma. 

Not here. No space. No ma'am.

I guess if you want to make a movie that deals with the mysteries of the extra terrestrial, and you don't have much of a budget, you can skip the outer space entirely and save a couple bucks. Then again, no film that takes place in outer space is actually filmed in outer space. It's all digital, and without spoiling The Astronaut, let's just say they did have a budget for other digital effects we're going to see here.

So maybe it was just a miscalculation by Varley?

Or maybe the mysteries of the extra terrestrial are just more mysterious if the entirety of what happened off Earth, that led to the astronaut having the shattered helmet you see above when she returned, is left to the imagination.

I suppose if The Astronaut is undone by anything, it's not the lack of outer space, but rather the kooky twist in the third act. Which I'm not going to say didn't work at all, but just ... it's a choice.