The Astronaut's Wife (1999)

The Astronaut's Wife arrives from 1999, a year when studio thrillers could still be moody and derivative. Rand Ravich's directorial debut concerns Spencer Armacost, an astronaut, and his wife Jillian, a schoolteacher. It borrows from Rosemary's Baby and adds a space alien. The film includes one non-white supporting performer, Joe Morton, as Sherman Reese. His presence is matter-of-fact and unremarked. No broader racial consciousness follows. The rest of the cast is white. That is the extent of its representational gesture.

The film has no interest in modern social projects. There are no LGBTQ themes, no feminist critique, no climate anxiety, no anti-capitalist sermon, no body positivity, no neurodivergence advocacy, no historical revision. Pregnancy is body horror and an alien vessel. Jillian's psychiatric history is a plot mechanism for visions. The alien's scheme involves a defense contractor and a plane that disables warfare machinery, but the film does not turn this into a critique of capital. It is a slow-burn thriller about a woman who suspects her husband is no longer her husband. The suspense is mild. The pacing is funereal. Critics compared it unfavorably to Polanski and meant it.

What remains is a curious artifact. It is too tasteful to be exploitation and too sluggish to be fun. Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron have little chemistry, which is a problem when the plot depends on intimacy turning sinister. The film has no lecture energy. It never tells us how to vote, what to consume, or which historical narrative to revise. It simply wants to unsettle. It mostly fails. The final image of the twin boys suggests a sequel that never came, which is perhaps the most merciful outcome. As a piece of social consciousness, it is a blank. As a late-nineties studio oddity, it is a minor curiosity.