Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
While Constellation, the tense and mysterious new sci-fi horror from Apple TV+, helmed by Peter Harness, is full of secrets and mysteries, it’s slowed down by a ponderous pace. Does the plot land or fall short of the moon?
It was J.J. Abrams who popularised the “mystery box” style of storytelling onscreen. The creator/writer/director used it to lure people into his TV shows like Lost and to drive Star Wars fans crazy theorising over who Supreme Leader Snoke was in 2015′s The Force Awakens.
The basic gist of mystery box storytelling is that you show people a box but not what’s inside. In Lost, you saw a polar bear on a tropical island. In Star Wars you saw a giant, deformed hologram. In neither case were explanations given until much, much later.
In both cases, the ultimate reveal turned out to be as satisfying as a warm beer on a hot day. This is because Abrams is extremely good at showing you a box but is extremely bad at putting anything of worth inside. Largely because, as he’s admitted, when he starts writing he doesn’t know, or care, what’s inside.
The mystery box at the heart of Apple TV+’s suspenseful sci-fi thriller Constellation is, quite literally, a box. It was running some kind of experiment aboard the International Space Station when disaster struck, forcing the crew to evacuate. Despite the chaos and danger, a head honcho at Nasa named Bud was adamant the mystery box join the fleeing astronauts in the escape pod.
Why? Well, there’s the show’s big secret. We know two things about this box, which is roughly shoebox-sized and filled with wires and blinking lights. The first is that it showed an anomaly moments before an unidentified object crashed into the ISS causing the residents to abandon ship. The second thing we know, well, that’s much more intriguing.
Noomi Rapace does a stellar job in Constellation.
Ever since Jo returned from space, reality has been slipping and time has been warping, the most harrowing of which revolves around her young daughter. The series plunges you into violent grey snowstorms and dark cold space, it navigates a creaky wooden house and the near-empty, claustrophobic space station and casts aspersions on events you’ve seen with your own eyes.
You also can’t discount the possibility that perhaps Jo hasn’t returned from space at all. It’s hard to know what’s going on because this is a mystery box show.
At its best, the series is a psychological nightmare with plenty of uneasy scenes like Jo running to comfort her fearful child who’s woken from a nightmare, only to catch a mirror reflection of her daughter happily singing in the bath, gasping in shock and then turning around to find herself alone in the empty house.
It shows enormous constraint in not piling on jump scares in these moments, generally opting for an existential horror rather than a series of fleeting frights.
At its worst, it’s ponderous. There are scenes that border on cheesy, being drenched as they are in premium-drama soft lighting. There’s also much repeating of information, especially in its first couple of episodes. Bud, for example, loves heatedly reminding people that this is their last chance to complete the mysterious experiment, gawddamit!
Large portions of Constellation may be set in space, but it is not rocketing through its storytelling.
So, it’s a good thing that its inherent mystery is so strong. The show has got its hooks in. Has the experiment opened a multi-reality rift that Jo is blundering through or is she simply losing her mind? Are the Russians covering up nefarious actions in space or is this dark conspiracy all in her mind? And why can no one else see the same experimental anomalies as Bud?
These are questions that all need answers but I’m hopeful that besides the flashing light, this mystery box isn’t full of smoke and mirrors.
Henry Caldera is played by the show’s other big name, Jonathan Banks,
Noomi Rapace(The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) does a stellar job as Jo, giving nothing away as she flips from self-assured to terrified and back again depending on where she is in space and time. The show’s other big name is Jonathan Banks, from Better Call Saul, who plays Bud and Bud’s ex-astronaut brother Henry. I think.
The show’s timelines are opaque, jumbling into and around each other as the action orbits the courtroom, the cosmos and even a cruise ship. Remove all the fanciful notions that the term “dream logic” suggests and it could apply here.
While Constellation falls just short of the moon, it does do a fine job of illuminating all its mysterious points. I just hope that when the show concludes they all connect to reveal a wonderous and coherent picture.
