The Odyssey 1 spacecraft is on a long and tortuous journey to harvest methane via a slingshot manoeuvre around Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. The three-man crew spends months in hibernation, awakening every now and again to ensure that the ship is still on course and that all systems are functioning. Inevitably, the crew start to feel disorientated, and John (Casey Affleck), in particular, is starting to suffer from hallucinations, and he sees his girlfriend Zoe (Emily Beecham) aboard the ship. In flashback, we see the development of their relationship back on Earth; John is reticent, a cold fish, but eventually, he enters into a relationship with Emily even though his heart is set on being chosen as part of the crew for the Odyssey mission. As time wears on, John and fellow crewman Nash (Tomer Capone) become increasingly paranoid, convinced that the slingshot manoeuvre will not work and that the ship will be lost in space. It falls to the mission’s commander, Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne), to try and keep the crew together even as they’re slowly unravelling…

Slingshot is an odd and slightly disconcerting space adventure movie. It’s a study in paranoia and isolation – a post-Covid parable, perhaps? – and Affleck’s cold, detached performance adds to the generally dislocated tone of the narrative. It’s resolutely not one for an audience looking for high stakes, adrenalised action and adventure – its pace is glacial at best. Yet there’s something absorbing about the story, aided by the superbly sparse production design of the interior of the spaceship which feels stiflingly claustrophobic and unsettling. John’s descent into paranoia is underplayed by Affleck to the point of inertia, and yet it’s an intriguing and engrossing character study of a man losing his mind and his way in a cold and unwelcoming environment where he begins to realise he’s not even sure he can trust his crewmates. The final act delivers a few welcome – and genuinely surprising – twists, and if Mikael Hafstrom’s film ultimately falls short of its desire to recapture the tone and atmosphere of the likes of Moon and Solaris, it’s nonetheless a brave, if slightly cold and clinical, attempt to deliver a science-fiction story that’s about the human condition rather than the special effects.

SLINGSHOT is on release in the USA and is released digitally in the UK on November 4th