High Life

Most space movies treat the vacuum of the universe like a sterile Apple Store—all white plastic, humming computers, and clean jumpsuits. But in the hands of French legend Claire Denis, space is a leaky, sweaty, biological mess. It smells of recycled air and old garden soil. I watched this for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon in a theater where the air conditioning was broken, and honestly, the creeping dampness of my own shirt made the experience feel four-dimensional. It’s that kind of movie; it gets under your skin and stays there like a splinter.

The Biological Cost of Deep Space

High Life doesn't care about your traditional "mission to save humanity" tropes. Instead, we are dropped onto a ship that looks less like the Enterprise and more like a shipping container floating toward a black hole. The crew? A group of death-row inmates who traded their executions for a chance to be human guinea pigs. They aren’t there to explore; they are there to be harvested.

The film centers on Monte, played by Robert Pattinson, who has spent the last decade proving he’s one of the most interesting actors alive by picking projects that make his Twilight fans scream in confusion. Monte is the ship's last standing soul, tending to a baby and a garden while his former crewmates... well, let’s just say things didn't go well. The film moves in a non-linear loop, showing us how a mission led by the obsessive Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche) descended into a primal, fleshy nightmare.

Dr. Dibs is obsessed with creating a "space baby," and she’s not above using the crew as non-consensual biological donors to get it done. Juliette Binoche is terrifying here, sporting hair so long it looks like a cape and stalking the halls like a mad scientist in a gothic novel. She runs a room called "The Fuckbox"—a chrome-plated masturbation chamber that is easily the most uncomfortably horny piece of set design in modern cinema. It’s the kind of thing that makes you realize Claire Denis is interested in the parts of humanity we usually leave behind on Earth: our urges, our fluids, and our capacity for absolute cruelty.

Pattinson, Benjamin, and the Art of the Slow Burn

What really anchors this movie is the surprising tenderness of the performances. Robert Pattinson gives a quiet, soulful performance that relies heavily on his eyes and his physicality. Seeing him care for a toddler in the middle of a literal void is oddly moving. He’s joined by André 3000 (credited as André Benjamin), who plays Tcherny. It is such a trip to see a hip-hop icon just quietly tending to some space-carrots, but he brings a grounded, weary humanity to the film that makes the eventual chaos hit harder.

The rest of the ensemble, including a jaggedly intense Mia Goth, fills out a crew that feels genuinely dangerous. There is no camaraderie here, only the shared knowledge that they are already dead men walking. This is a film where the "science" in science fiction takes a backseat to the "fiction" of how human beings fall apart when they lose the sun. It’s bleak, sure, but it’s also weirdly beautiful in the way a car crash in slow motion is beautiful.

Why This Movie Vanished (and Why You Need to See It)

Released in 2018, High Life felt like the spearhead of the "prestige sci-fi" movement, arriving around the same time as Ad Astra and Arrival. However, while those films had massive budgets and major studio backing, High Life was a scrappy, European-funded experiment that barely broke $2 million at the box office. It was too weird for the multiplex and too gross for the casual Oscar viewer.

Behind the scenes, the production was a bit of a miracle. Denis had wanted to make this film for fifteen years, originally imagining Philip Seymour Hoffman in the lead. When Robert Pattinson heard she was looking for a lead, he hounded her. She initially thought he was too young and too "pretty" for the role, but his persistence paid off. The ship itself was built on a modest budget in a studio in Cologne, and the "black hole" effects were created with input from actual astrophysicists—though the film uses that data to create something that looks more like a terrifying eye than a math equation.

In our current era of franchise fatigue, where every space movie feels like a setup for a sequel or a toy line, High Life is a middle finger to the status quo. It doesn't want to sell you an action figure; it wants to make you think about the fact that we are all just bags of water and ego floating through a vacuum. It’s a film that asks what’s left of us when there’s no society left to watch.

High Life is a polarizing, sweaty, and deeply haunting piece of contemporary cinema. It isn't a "fun" watch in the traditional sense, but it is an unforgettable one. It’s the kind of film that reminds me why I love the medium—it takes me somewhere I’ve never been and shows me things I’m not sure I was supposed to see. If you’re tired of the same old polished blockbusters, take a trip with Monte and his crew. Just maybe don't eat any Raisinets while you're watching; you’ll want to pay attention to every uneasy breath.