Orion Review: A Sci-Fi Thriller That Makes You Work for Every Answer

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Orion Review: A Sci-Fi Thriller That Makes You Work for Every Answer

Most thrillers hand you information and wait for you to catch up. Orion does the opposite. It floods the screen with detail, extreme close-ups, fractured sound, disorienting angles, while deliberately keeping you from understanding what any of it actually means. It’s a disorienting approach on paper. On screen, it turns into one of the more genuinely absorbing sci-fi thrillers of the year.

An Astronaut Who Can’t Remember His Own Crew

Drew Van Acker plays Apollo, the lone survivor of a catastrophic space mission who returns to Earth with no memory of what happened to the rest of his crew. He wakes up in a stark, concrete interrogation facility, where Jim Lee (Andrew McCarthy) has been assigned to help him piece his memory back together, one fragmented detail at a time.

Debby Ryan plays Mary, someone with a personal connection to Apollo who adds another layer to an already uncertain picture. Without spoiling where things go, it’s enough to say that whatever killed Apollo’s crew may not have stayed behind in space, and the race to recover his memories comes with a ticking clock the characters don’t fully understand themselves.

Why the Camera Won’t Let You See Clearly

Director Jaco Bouwer makes an unusual choice right from the opening minutes, and he sticks with it for the entire runtime. Working with cinematographer David Kruta, the film leans hard into extreme close-ups, pushing in so tight on a blink or a flicker of expression that the smallest gesture becomes its own kind of scene. The tighter the camera gets, the less context the audience actually has, and that tension between detail and understanding becomes the film’s whole language.

Frames tilt. Geography gets scrambled. A few sequences skip the usual establishing shot entirely, letting the audience piece together what’s happening purely from sound, movement, and fragments rather than a clear wide shot spelling it out. It’s a bold structural choice, and it mostly pays off, because it mirrors exactly what Apollo himself is going through: trying to reconstruct a complete picture out of disconnected pieces.

A Thriller That Treats Sound Like a Second Script

What really sets Orion apart is how seriously it takes its sound design. Composer Pierre-Henri Wicomb keeps the score restrained rather than telling the audience how to feel at every turn, which leaves real room for silence, breathing, and unfamiliar tones to carry weight on their own. That restraint turns out to be one of the smartest choices in the whole film. A more conventional score would spell out every emotional beat. This one trusts the audience to sit with uncertainty instead.

As Apollo’s memory starts reassembling itself, those sounds and images shift too. Flashback sequences bring in warmer color and light, a deliberate contrast to the cold, desaturated present. Interestingly, the production reportedly used original camera lenses from Solaris for those memory sequences, a small detail that adds real texture to how the film separates reality from recollection.

Drew Van Acker and Andrew McCarthy Carry the Tension

Because the camera stays so close to Van Acker for most of the runtime, he doesn’t have room to perform outwardly, and he wisely doesn’t try. It’s a quiet, internalized performance built on hesitation and flickers of recognition rather than big emotional swings, and it suits a character who genuinely doesn’t know what he’s allowed to trust about his own mind.

Andrew McCarthy brings something different and equally effective as Jim Lee. He plays the role with an easy, familiar warmth that slowly starts to feel less reassuring the longer the film goes on. A pause held a beat too long, a small physical tic, nothing dramatic, just enough to make you start questioning what he’s actually not saying. It’s a clever use of McCarthy’s natural screen likability, turned into something quietly unsettling.

A Film Built for a Second Watch

Orion isn’t interested in simply withholding a twist until the credits roll. It’s more interested in how people actually process information through language, memory, sound, and assumption, and how easily each of those can mislead. That approach means some viewers may find the pacing deliberate, even slow, especially in the film’s opening stretch before the pieces start connecting.

But that slower pace is doing real work. Once the fuller picture starts coming into focus, earlier scenes take on new meaning, and small details that seemed incidental the first time around suddenly carry weight. It’s the kind of film built to reward a second viewing rather than one that simply conceals information until it’s convenient to reveal it.

Who Will Get the Most Out of This

If you’re a fan of slow-burn, idea-driven sci-fi like Arrival, this is an easy recommendation. It prioritizes mood, performance, and perception over action or spectacle, and it trusts its audience to stay engaged without constant hand-holding.

Viewers looking for a faster-paced thriller, or one with more conventional scares given its mild horror-adjacent elements, may find the deliberate pacing tests their patience. This is a film that rewards attention rather than demanding constant momentum.

The Verdict

Orion is a confident, well-crafted sci-fi thriller that trusts its audience to do real work piecing together what’s happening, and it’s all the more satisfying for it. Between Van Acker’s internalized lead performance, McCarthy’s quietly unnerving turn, and a sound design that functions almost like its own character, this is a film built on craft rather than easy answers.

Rating: 4/5

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Quick Facts

Title: Orion
Director: Jaco Bouwer
Writer: Anne Vithayathil
Genre: Psychological Sci-Fi Thriller
Runtime: 1h 36m
Starring: Drew Van Acker, Andrew McCarthy, Debby Ryan, Theodora Miranne, Natalia Lesz
Release date: October 2, 2026 (select theaters), digital release in November 2026