User reviews

I can see why 'Approaching the Unknown' would not be to everyone's liking. It's very much a slow-burner of a film and is really more of a character study than anything else. With space movies I think people have come to expect drama filled, save-the-world type films and this is simply not that. This is the story of a man who has embarked on a mission that very few people on Earth would be brave enough to do, and the struggle he consequently went through.

I actually quite enjoyed it for the most part. A film with basically only one character is never going to be the most exhilarating watch, however the pacing of the film doesn't feel overly slow. Mark Strong in the lead role does a good job of being just interesting enough in what would have been a very tough role to take on.

As mentioned, this won't be for everyone. People who go into this expecting an 'Armegeddon' or even 'Gravity' type film are going to be let down and I suspect that is a lot of the reason why this film has not been received very well. However if you go in simply expecting a solid exploration of astronaut life and the challenges they can go through mentally, I think you will find yourself quite enjoying this one.

Following the success of movies like Moon, someone thought it would be a good idea to try with a movie about a mission towards Mars. Mark Strong starts off as an astronaut that is sent there and thinks about his place in the world and talks to people on Earth. It got me excited. Yet by the end I couldn't decide if I am to feel stupid or offended.

Alarm bells started to ring in my mind almost immediately. The personality of the guy was unstable to being cowboyish. The science didn't add up. The atmospheric dye effects had no connection to space or to the story. The water got contaminated by a battery short?! The astronaut's motivation to go to Mars was specifically because he liked the feeling of dying. I mean, come on!

But even with all this aside - and I am capable to putting aside the technical aspects - the film is actually saying nothing concrete. Should we abandon going to space because it is folly or is it that the writer has so little faith in NASA that he thinks all astronauts will be allowed to be depressed artists that write their journal with pencils and feel lonely in space? Is there a point to all the inner dialogues of the guy or is he just losing his mind in this really slow movie? We don't know.

Bottom line: I liked the production values of the film and the acting, but I couldn't get my head around what the writer/director was trying to say. It's time artsy folk understand that not only engineers are a completely different type of people from them, but that writing and directing your own movie is only rarely a good idea.

This movie is good. I honestly understand the bad rating, because its not mainstream and you need to understand the "zen-spirit" of it.You need to have sensitivity and some wisdom to appreciate a movie like this.Its atmospheric and poetic.Lets you experience space from an angle of basic reality and not heroism nor action.

The slow descend into madness, his monologues, it is good.

A good story isn't about a lot of action, a lot of events, it lies in the subtleties and how they come together.

Just a good movie. I guess, blade runner also had a bad reception when it was released. This movie is perhaps not meant for this generation of action spoiled viewers. I really hope this will get some appreciation along the line, so that we may see more of this quality. Real sci-fi fans will love this movie for what it is.

If you are looking for a typical Hollywood Mars movie this isn't it. Film's story and its main focus is inside the mind of the main character and the struggle he is facing on his journey to Mars, as opposed to more straightforward action in a 3-piece act. It may also come across as pessimistic as it deals with questions of fate and what life can bring on a one way journey, as life really is, into the unknown; Mars, future, afterlife etc. It isn't satisfying in sense that it brings you a "proper" conclusion to the story, but rather makes you wonder, which can easily turn into dissatisfaction that you were cheated as you waited for the story to bring something forth, instead it leaves you wondering. I applaud the risk the story took to delve into the mind of an engineer and how it handled it. I also applaud Mark Strong for his captivating performance. I don't recommend this to everyone, but to those who don't mind to be left with an unfinished story, come to the conclusion on your own, or keep searching.

I had great expectations for this movie after seen the trailer, that looked amazing. Well, what a disappointment this film was. Is not that the acting was bad, or the production values. Neither the visual effects, which are OK. It's just that NOTHING happens... at least nothing that can move the spectators to feel, or even THINK something. The whole thing is an exercise on futility, good concepts wasted and pretentious sequences of slow motion stuff trying to be philosophical or something, but just coming out... lame. If you want to see an exciting, deep, or even entertaining sci fi space film, look somewhere else.

The daily routines, boredom, fixing the issues as he goes along.. it's all a very good projection of what one would go through on a trip that far in space. One initially might think it an exciting journey and while it would be, it's the daily monotony, repeating itself and enduring that which would be the major challenge .. assuming the ship has allvthe tech and science it needs to get one there. I found it interesting. Good watch.

After seeing this movie, I was really thrilled and thought I had seen something worth seeing. Yet I can also understand why many other don't feel that way. This movie doesn't aim to please all audiences, it really targets a specific group of viewers you may or may not be part of.

As other reviewers already stated: if you're looking for an action-packed sci-fi or anticipation movie, move along because this one is not for you. If you're looking for an uplifting, Hollywood-style feel good movie... move along. If you're after great landscapes of Mars and big spaceships roaming about, you should also probably look for other movies. Yet this movie has a lot going for it, as long as you realize what you're in for:

This is a story about a character who is willing to leave everything behind for the greater good, for science and for the slim chance of becoming the first human on Mars. The whole movie is basically a "huis clos", a closed stage in a cramped vessel, where you follow a single individual during his journey of 270 days in space, alone. He has to fight boredom, madness and growing technical issues he is partly responsible for due to his overconfidence and his belief that he can solve everything on his own. He also has to cope with the burden of the entire humanity back on Earth cheering for him and placing the highest expectations on his shoulders. Yet he's just a man. Hopes, successes, failures... They are all part of the journey, and the lead character confronts each in a very believable way.

Acting is spot on (bravo Mark Strong), and the reactions never feel alien or unrealistic. FX are good enough, but this movie doesn't rely on them heavily at all.

There is one very big leap of faith the audience is supposed to make: I find it highly dubious for various reasons that humanity would send a single person on such a long journey without backup: way too dangerous. Yet if you're willing to go with it, you'll find this movie to picture a very believable analysis of human nature when confronted to loneliness, various pressures and challenging situations.

All in all, this movie is more of a psychological approach of long journeys in isolation and adversity, rather than a sci-fi/anticipation movie on colonizing Mars.

I would definitely recommend this movie to those among you who like slow-paced, "psychological" movies such as (with some similarities): - Solaris (2002) - 2001 Space odyssey - Silent running - Das Boot (in some ways) - 127 hours (in some ways) - The survivalist (in some ways)

I actually loved this film, the great sense of emptiness and solitude and of the austerity of the inside of the space craft. The photography was beautifully done and really captured the mood; That sense of total isolation really came through. The allure of outer space, like any expedition, is the means to counter the technological conundrums presented and a space film presents the possibility of infinite fascination with a world we don't know and the ability to utilise technology to perform a successful expedition. This film fails miserably in an area where it was most important not to and even an 'F' student in a high school would have spotted the anomalies. You can't derive oxygen and hydrogen from dirt, it;s a silicate. Even if you could then the resultant re-combining of oxygen and hydrogen presents the same kind of instability as a weapons grade bomb. Where was all the dirt stored? Why not store more water? Secondly, in a complex space craft, surely someone remembered to install breakers or even fuses! The gyroscope was almost as incongruous as a wind up gramaphone; computers do all the guidance. Whywas the battery which was only intermittently shorted, bleeding redstuff into the water? Why did the rocket lose four boosters between theground and earths upper atmosphere- they just weren't there any more?Why was Stanaforth sent into the desert with untested equipment. Whywas he called Stanaforth, its a stupid and unconvincing name. Why wasmark strong compelled to speak with that generic mid-western Americanaccent, he was useless at it and I like him as an actor. It's all toobad as the film was visually stunning but letdown by appalling scienceand plain bad screen writing. I hate it when something so potentially brilliant is ruined by slapdash research and poor writing; this film was truly worth more than that and should be remade with the problem areas addressed. Lastly; the title is lame.

I had to stop watching 40 minutes in. It was THAT bad. Imagine if someone made a movie just like "The Martian" but with no talented actors, no actual plot, a poor screenplay and no cinematography. What a swell idea - Let's do it ! There is no plot. It's as if the faceless assassin from "A Game of Thrones" decides to make a movie,"A man goes to Mars. A man arrives on Mars". The End.

The acting is not believable. There is NO cinematography to speak of.The special effects are decidedly non-special. The plot is non-existent. There is almost literally nothing to see here. Why even make this stinker in the first place?? Don't waste your time - you've been warned.

First, this is menial budget movie . . . All the bad reviewers were more used to high budget fancy space genre movies. Ignore such reviews.

Second, the plot of the movie runs on the lines of meta-physical monologue of the protagonist., which is quintessentially the very fundamental element of this genre.

In most high-budget movies, to cater the broader audience, this element is generally faded out romance elements, human conflicts, moral paradoxes. Not in this. This strictly confined to meta-physical aspects of existentialism one faces when they are alone and divorced off the world.

I could have given 10, but I am disappointed by the ending. Wish, there is more philosophical monologue in the end. That's the only disappointment of this film.

In the beginning, the plot seems way too cliche. Please understand, its just setting stage for the character. If you could push through the part and involve meditative with the character, trust me, its a beautiful movie.

Give it a try with your heart . . . It won't disappoint.

The story was interesting and the pacing was sublime.

It's not a movie without problems though, 2 of them in particular.

First: the actors are not 'big-budget' super-stars, so the level of 'familiarity' is obviously not the same as it is with 'big' moves.

This detracts slightly from the immersion-factor.

Couple that with the second problem; that the movie doesn't spend enough time character-building, and we are unavoidably faced with the feeling that these guys we go on a journey with are all still more or less strangers.

Especially the female astronaut. She wasn't introduced before the mission was underway, so that just didn't work as well as it might have.

The story itself, however, was great. The concept. What this movie was really about. That worked very well.

It's not really important if one agrees or not with how the events unfolded, since this would likely be different for different people anyway, but the pace of the build-up was just brilliant.

So a clever and thought-provoking movie.

Visually it had some spectacular moments as well, even though this never appeared to be a focus-point of the film. Personally I really liked how space kind of became more and more psychedelic as the mission progressed deeper and deeper. I thought that was a subtle stroke of genius that fit the story perfectly. It made everything feel all that more in sync.

The movie did not appear to portray a realistic space-mission, at least I hope not, but rather tried to make a play on some potential emotional aspects that are perhaps more fundamental to life on a broader scale and where using a space-mission as the 'container' for the story seemed to make good sense.

A fine movie. Not a perfect movie, but a movie that does make an impression in a good way.

It give it 7 stars and recommend it :)

You should paint anything and pause to watch it dry. It will be more rewarding. If you chose to watch this then be prepared to hope it gets better only to realize you've wasted valuable time you could be painting. You see, when you paint something you're actually going to get a payback for your time spent, no such benefit here. This is suppose to be nailing the strangeness and solitude inherent in long space flight. What it does achieve, if you watch for the 30-minutes I suffered, is that if you cared about whatever you could have used your time for it is now wasted...totally.. This film is boring beyond belief. I'd say I gave the film 30-minute because I'm pretty stubborn and have an inherent belief there is always something of merit if you delve deeper. I'm definitely re-thinking this as the only thing besides wondering why I continued this long is that how did this film get made?

I like to think that this was a recruitment video for Space Force, and that after watching it, Trump would pump his fist and exclaim, "Nailed it!". Yes, the timing is all wrong for this joke, but it fits right in with the movie.

This is a Science Fiction movie, but with no Science, no Fiction, and no movie. I assume they lured Mark Strong into some form of "Hobo Containment Device" (Trademark, Copyright Reserved), by leaving some of those bags of dehydrated pasta in a pile with a stick in the center, holding up a tarp.

Imagine the pitch for this movie...Director: "What if NASA was one guy in a garage, the astronauts were all plant-hating psychopaths, and everything is so absurd the audience will be convinced this is a metaphor, but then at the end we'll make it all impossibly real!" Producer: "Whoa whoa! That's a little too science-y for me! Can we dumb this down a bit?" Director, cracking knuckles, "Hold my beer..."

If they had just leaned into the stupidity a bit more: like having Mark Strong attack the Magnetic Storm with his trusty Protractor, his red water, and a scowl; or having him fix the other ship's "gyro problems" by removing a panel, and then tying an untied shoelace behind said panel; or having the space station transform into a giant mouse to get revenge for the two mice killed by the station hillbillies/psychos, and then somehow eating the men still inside the transformed station; or having Luke Wilson "the one man at NASA" always be facing the wrong way when he is trying to communincate; then this movie would still be bad. Thanks for reading my ideas though!

After all these bad reviews I practically expected nothing and was positively surprised.

Indeed it's not a Thriller. There's no action in common ways, and yet it is a challenging story about one man who at all costs wants to become the first to live on Mars, brilliantly portrayed by Mark Strong and his supporting actors.

I would never compare it to "The Martian". All they have in common: the red planet and survival. If you really need a comparison, take "Gravity" or "Moon", though here was obviously much less budget available. So in this case I really don't care about technical, astrophysical goofs.

It's a psycho-philosophical Sci-Fi-Drama; small, profound, serious and quite slow. Therefore it hopefully will achieve more acknowledgment in future.

As others have said, very little happens in this. Even if you accept this as a psychological drama (with little that is dramatic), the audience's faith is destroyed early on by the many mistakes. At launch, Stanaforth is sitting upright, instead of reclining. The g-force would not be tolerable in that position. He is shown sharpening a pencil. Even with artificial gravity, the shavings would play havoc with the ventilation system. (The old story about NASA spending millions developing a pen for weightless conditions, while the Russians used a pencil, is a myth.) The lack of delay in the communications is perhaps the most obvious goof although the makers will probably claim that it was merely a dramatic device (again, with no drama). The EVA suit, with the big welder's gauntlets, looked like a cross between kid's fancy dress outfit and a shell suit.