Taglines: Imagine the face of terror is the one you love.
The Astronaut’s Wife movie storyline. Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) is a NASA astronaut and his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) is a teacher. While he and Alex Streck (Nick Cassavetes) are walking in space on a mission there is an explosion that knocks out their communication with the command center.
They land but when their spouses see them they are in hospital; both asleep until they recover. Armacost eventually wakes up without problems but Streck has a medical emergency requiring him to have electrical cardioversion. Neither speak about the in-flight emergency. Armacost accepts a position with a New York-based company, McClaren. At a party, Streck’s actions catch the attention of Jillian and he dies from what NASA attributes to a stroke. At the Speck home following the funeral Natalie Streck (Donna Murphy) electrocutes herself in the bath with a radio.
In New York at a party, Jillian asks him about the space walk incident. He answers while he starts to make love to her. At home he makes aggressive love to her. In the background is a crackling radio noise. She is diagnosed with twins and she tells the doctor that earlier in her life she sought hospitalized psychiatric care because she started to see people dead, including herself in the bath with a radio.
Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) has been terminated from NASA because he has advised all parties concerned that there has been a change in Spencer and that Natalie was pregnant with twins that at the time of her suicide. Reese tells Jillian that Natalie’s twins have something that requires a personal meeting to show her. Spencer intercepts him but he has sent her a key to a self storage locker that has a VHS video cassette that explains that her twins might be intended in the operation of a McClaren plane that disables warfare machinery. Jillian attempts an abortion but is thwarted by Spencer.
In a dream, Jillian sees her sister, Nan (Clea DuVall), killed by Spencer when she questions why he has Reese’s briefcase. Jillian leaves the hospital on her own but Spencer follows her because he is inside her. At home, Jillian finds her dead sister. She floods the floor with water, with a radio in the sink and she holding the ends of the cords. Spencer says that who she sees is a space alien that has killed the real Spencer. Jillian lifts her feet off the wet floor, connects the cords and electrocutes the alien. The alien leaves Spencer’s body and transmits into Jillian.
The Astronaut’s Wife is a 1999 American science fiction thriller film directed and written by Rand Ravich. It stars Charlize Theron, Johnny Depp, Joe Morton, Clea DuVall, Donna Murphy, Nick Cassavetes, Samantha Eggar, Gary Grubbs, Blair Brown, Tom Noonan and Lucy Lin.
Film Review for The Astronaut’s Wife
Rand Ravich’s “The Astronaut’s Wife” is a moderately diverting thriller that builds suspense and entertains effectively–but don’t ask any more of this sleek, costly production, whose strongest selling point is Charlize Theron.
Since her debut in “2 Days in the Valley” she’s appeared in a string of major features, but it’s surprising that so early on in her career she’s able to carry so big a picture with ease and finesse. The other surprise is that she is in fact the star, billing aside, with Johnny Depp her leading man in a role that places minimal demands on his protean talent. You can understand why Theron would be attracted to this project, but not how as adventuresome an actor as Depp would go for what is clearly a subordinate role.
In any event, Theron’s Jillian is a beautiful young Florida grade school teacher happily married to an astronaut, Spencer (Depp). While on a space shuttle mission with his fellow astronaut Alex (Nick Cassavetes), NASA loses contact with the men while they seemingly have lost consciousness themselves. They return safely, but Alex’s heart has been so severely strained by the mysterious mishap that he eventually succumbs to a violent seizure, with his benumbed wife (Donna Murphy) committing suicide soon afterward.
Spencer, however, has been pronounced perfectly healthy, and leaves NASA with a hero’s status for a cushy rocket-designing job at a major company in Manhattan, which allows the couple to move up to a lavish lifestyle. Jillian is less than thrilled with the move and its fancy trappings, but she’s game. However, she continues experiencing nightmares and senses that something may not be quite right with Spencer. Her worst suspicions are confirmed soon enough by the sudden appearance of Spencer’s distraught former colleague (Joe Morton) at NASA, which in effect has gotten rid of him because he’s voiced suspicions about Spencer, who may in fact be an alien on some sort of takeover mission.
Very quickly Theron finds herself in the classic lady-in-distress predicament of realizing nobody could be expected to believe her, which means she must try to confront a mysterious, evil, destructive force all by herself. Theron makes Jillian and her predicament quite convincing while Depp moves from good ol’ boy to an increasingly cool and controlling presence.
In his feature debut, Ravich demonstrates some sense of how to build tension gradually. What “The Astronaut’s Wife” needed to lift it above the ordinary, however, is another layer of meaning. The film might have achieved that extra dimension if we were truly kept guessing whether the film would turn out to be a psychological thriller or a thriller of the supernatural. While we’re given to understand that Jillian experienced a breakdown after the death of her parents, Ravich makes it all too clear that Jillian isn’t crazy while Spencer truly is sinister. This handsome-looking film, which has a notable supporting cast that includes Samantha Eggar as Jillian’s patrician doctor, works up to a reasonably edgy if unsurprising finish.
The Astronaut’s Wife (1999)
Directed by: Rand Ravich
Starring: Charlize Theron, Johnny Depp, Joe Morton, Clea DuVall, Donna Murphy, Nick Cassavetes, Samantha Eggar, Gary Grubbs, Blair Brown, Tom Noonan, Lucy Lin
Screenplay by: Rand Ravich
Production Design by: Jan Roelfs
Cinematography by: Allen Daviau
Film Editing by: Timothy Alverson, Steve Mirkovich
Costume Design by: Isis Mussenden
Set Decoration by: Leslie Pope
Art Direction by: Sarah Knowles
Music by: George S. Clinton
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and a strong scene of sexuality.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: August 27, 1999
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