Parasite is a tough act to follow and director Bong Joon Ho was never going to be able to live up to the full weight of expectations placed. Mickey 17, his much-delayed follow-up, is a existential sci-fi romp of the perfect capitalist worker: a literally “expendable” clone who can be regenerated after a little thing like dying. And, of course, Robert Pattinson putting on his whiniest voice to do quite a lot of double duty. This is very much Moon taken to its dark, comedic extreme.

The satire is not subtle. Immediately the viewer picks up on the greedy cynicism, the ostentatious speaking style, the expensive suits and the right-wing populism. And, of course, the red caps sported by his supporters. Then again, it had been filmed in earlier days; it just so happens that it was released in an uncomfortably timely era. Our protagonist, the hapless silent-clown Mickey of the seventeenth iteration, is played by Pattinson with an aw-shucks kind of sincerity that is all the more sharply contrasted with his successor. After agreeing to a series of terrible business decisions with his fair-weather friend, Timo (Steven Yeun), he is forced to flee to space to avoid the retribution of a powerful loan shark. Without any unique skill that would otherwise earn him a spot on the last spaceship departing before the loan shark’s deadline, he agrees to become a menial worker. He, and all his successive iterations, are put through dangerous situations that the rest of the crew cannot be risked on. Upon the death of one, the next one is spat out of a whirring printer with technology that was banned on Earth, and only occasionally caught by the crew of technicians. And all of this takes place on an icy planet with native inhabitants: referred to as ‘creepers’, they are sentient beings with language and family. They save Mickey from dying in an ice ravine and most certainly do not appreciate the intention of creating a “pure, white planet full of superior people” from their homeland.

What’s it like to die? A recurring question throughout the film for Mickey. Certainly, at first everyone treats his mortality as a matter of fact: he dies a dozen times over in the first half hour, and there’s a truly audacious scene where Timo sobs while saying that it doesn’t matter if he’s killed on screen once since he can just be reprinted. He never appreciates the question; he says he’s scared every time it happens, that he hates it, and his acceptance of constant resurrection dies upon meeting a ‘multiple’ of himself. A duplicate in looks but not personality, they initially compete over the love of their more competent girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) and panic over what their co-existence means. Pattinson cleverly uses his expressive physicality; Mickey 18 is more aggressive, more vindictive and sharp-tongued, and much less concerned about things like his body being chopped up to appease the loan shark. They are each other’s antithesis while being physically identical, so it really did rely on Pattinson’s facial expressions and bodily gestures to distinguish between them (at least until the end), and he rises to the task amazingly.

Bong’s visuals are spectacular as always, with the drab spaceship and swirl of white snow on the planet juxtaposed with the colourful clothes worn by the expedition crew and leaders. He has embraced all the absurdity and idiosyncrasy to make a beautifully empathetic film about an unlikely survivor and saviour. Regardless of his string of interesting decisions (was that almost-threesome in space necessary?), Mickey’s ability to continue on after so much teetering on apocalyptic despair has happened is by far the most inspiring part of this space oddity.

Verdict:

Mickey 17 is the kind of movie that crawls under your skin and sets up shop. It’s slick, smart, and colder than the grave; fitting, since it’s set on an ice-planet where the main character dies over and over again. Bong Joon Ho, that sneaky wizard of a filmmaker, serves up a story that’s part Twilight Zone, part 1984, and all him – twisted, funny, and sharp as a scalpel.

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