After the fantastic The Martian I was looking for another science fiction/space related movie and 400 Days sounded like an interesting one. Because if we ever want to travel long distances in space it is important that a group of people is able to handle it psychologically. That’s what 400 Days is about.
In order to test this a group of 4 people is placed in an underground living space, which they have to stay in for 400 days and perform various tasks which they would normally have to do during an actual space mission. These could emergency situation, but also psychological research. The question is whether or not they will be able to make it through when they lose contact with the outside world and some of the crew members start to see strange things. Are they still in a simulation or has something horrible happened outside?
It might not have helped that after seeing The Martian I expected realism from a movie about space. Because of that movie I read up a bit and understood that NASA learned some hard lessons from the first missions, which resulted in making selections of the crew based on the psychological profiles. This is something which immediately is wrong about this film, because it quickly turns out that the people selected aren’t the most stable. Two of them used to be a couple, something you wouldn’t do during a real mission. If you are willing to put that aside though, 400 Days does offer moments of suspense. During the last part of the mission it all becomes very strange and the ending is one you could discuss. Still, this isn’t a movie I would immediately recommend as it’s just a bit too much “B-movie”.
