Starian
2018 · 8m
Directed by Eric Zaragoza
Genres: coming-of-age, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Stranded aboard the spaceship Starian after its crew vanishes, two mismatched girls must survive deep space and decide whether to open a forbidden canister that may explain the disaster.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Starian plays it frustratingly straight—two girls, a mystery box, the obligatory choice that defines them. It's competent sci-fi theater, but there's nothing here that makes me lean forward and ask 'wait, what?' The premise *should* provoke; instead it settles into familiar beats.
Zaragoza understands the grammar of sci-fi suspense and assembles each scene with deliberate tension, but the film doesn't quite find its own formal language—it borrows fluently from better-known predecessors without the rigor or argument that would make it memorable at a curator's table.
The decision to keep the girls' dynamic grounded and specific—their bickering, their unequal knowledge, the small gestures of trust in crisis—is what lifts this from premise-driven thriller into something that breathes; Zaragoza knows that eight minutes survives on character work, not spectacle.
Reviews
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