Sci-fi films have come in all shapes and sizes. Most of the time they’ve come in the form of a Star Wars, Star Trek, or Aliens franchise movie. Sometimes they’ve come as a stand-alone vision from the writers and director. That’s the case with Slingshot even though it seems like it may have taken some inspiration from a great Jim Carrey film The Truman Show.

John (Casey Affleck) is a man who is training for a special space mission. He is going to be put on a spacecraft headed for Jupiter, but on the way, the ship needs a slingshot off of Saturn to get there. It takes special training and conditioning to be on this mission. He’s not alone though. On the mission are also Ash (Tomer Capone, The Boys) and Captain Franks (Laurence Fishbourne). They help make the trip easier to withstand. It’s not that easy to undergo the cryogenic sleep they have to go on between long distances of the journey. The drugs they have to take have an adverse effect on them. This causes some issues on the journey.  They have to determine what is real and what’s not real.

This film not only takes place on a spacecraft far off in space, but it also has flashbacks and dream sequences that help tell its story. In the flashbacks, the Affleck character has a loving relationship with Zoe (Emily Beecham), a program director for the organization who is in charge of sending the spacecraft off on its mission. They love each other, but they know their work is of the utmost importance to them. That separates them from what they feel for each other.  The dream sequences enforce the love they have for each other which makes it harder for Affleck’s character on the journey. 

The director Mikeal Halstrom and the writers R Scott Adams and Nathan Parker create a sense of paranoia, hallucinations, confusion, and a crazy mindset for the characters on the ship. These elements help make this story hard to figure out. This aspect of the movie makes it interesting. The one-location thing has been done before, but it’s these other elements that help make films set in one location better than they would seem.

The sci-fi parts of the story seemed to be a bit cincy to me. This is probably because the budget was low. I have seen worse sci-fi films than this one from a production standpoint, but this one isn’t great either. The set and production design look okay to me, but you can see it’s pretty low-budget. Something anyone can make in their backyard if they have a little creativity and no how. The inciting event was not much better either.  This aspect of the movie almost took me out of the film completely. 

Casey Affleck is an actor who has won an Academy Award for his role in Manchester by the Sea. He hasn’t had a lot of good roles since then. He even went as far as getting a writer to write a comedy with him so he could do something he wanted to do. That was a comedy and that turned into The Instigators. He’s been in some dramas like this one, but it’s not what he usually likes to do. He did however do a fine job with what he was given. The role was more complex than I thought it would be and he did an admirable job in it.

Slingshot has some elements that work and others that don’t. Considering the budget this was as good a job as I could possibly imagine the filmmakers doing. The cast helped make the story better than it otherwise would have been. Affleck is as good as I could imagine in such a role. He has shown even though he’s not in an Academy Award-worthy role he still can do a good job. Whether it be drama or comedy he has great ability in whatever he does.  This sci-fi film wasn’t one of the worst I’ve seen, but it’s not the best either. The Truman Show aspect through me for a loop which was a good twist. Hopefully, viewers will go for it more than I did.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen