Slingshot

To reach Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, the Odyssey 1 has to swing round Jupiter and use its gravity to fling itself onwards, the manoeuvre that gives 'Slingshot' its name. Swedish director Mikael Håfström has compared it with '1408', his Stephen King adaptation, and it's easy to see why: once again a man is shut inside four walls until he can't tell what's real.

There are three men on board: John (Casey Affleck), Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and aeronautics expert Nash (Tomer Capone). The trip takes years, so they spend most of it in hibernation, waking every 90 days to check on the ship, while back home an Earth in the grip of an energy crisis sees them as its last hope.

The hibernation drugs can cause confusion and disorientation, and John can't stop thinking about Zoe (Emily Beecham), a woman he met just before launch. When damage turns up on the hull that the cameras never caught, Nash fears the ship won't survive the pass around Jupiter and wants to turn back. Franks won't hear of it, and John starts to doubt everything, his own mind included.

Nathan Parker, who'd already written one story of isolation and paranoia far from Earth in 'Moon', wrote the script with R. Scott Adams. David Morrissey, the Governor in 'The Walking Dead', and Mark Ebulué complete the cast. Backed by Hungarian investors, it was shot from December 2021 at Korda Studios in Etyek, just outside Budapest.

Bleecker Street opened it in US cinemas on 30 August 2024, over the Labor Day weekend, and it flopped, finishing 20th with less than $600,000. Signature put it out on digital in the UK that November. Critics were split: some praised Affleck, Fishburne and the tension aboard the ship, while plenty found the flashbacks with Zoe far too long.

• Science fiction
• Science fiction
• Thriller