The Astronaut's Wife

The Astronaut's Wife is a science-fiction chiller of the effective kind.

The young astronaut Spencer Armacost gives up his career as an astronaut after a trip into space in which he and one of his colleagues, Alex Streck, survived a two-minute power failure while carrying out repairs outside the spacecraft. Alex Streck later dies a violent death, however, and his wife takes her own life. Nor does it please Spencer's wife Jillian that Spencer will not talk about the experience. At the same time he is not quite himself.

Spencer and Jillian move to New York, where Spencer has got a new job, but Jillian is not happy in her new surroundings. A dismissed NASA employee, Sherman Reese, seeks her out to warn her that her husband is not the same as before. Something terrible happened in space.

The film seems very much inspired by Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby". Even Charlize Theron's hairstyle is the same as Mia Farrow's, and on top of that director Nick Cassavetes has a small role. He 'happens' to be the son of John Cassavetes, who played Mia Farrow's husband in Polanski's film. Roman Polanski's chiller is more subtle, however, for there you are left uncertain whether the heroine's conspiracy theory has anything to it or whether she is mentally ill. In The Astronaut's Wife things are handled far more heavy-handedly.