Doctor Rike flies to sun-kissed Gibralter to singlehandedly pilot a yacht to the Ascension Island between Africa and Brazil. All looks good until she comes across a sinking boat on the horizon--a vessel filled to the brim with refugees.
Styx is a gripping sea adventure that mixes thrills and spills with thoughtfulness and compassion. The MVP here is Wolff, who superbly etches emotional disintegration alongside amazing physical prowess.
An allegory of Darwinism’s inhumanity and globalism’s inequality.
No easy solutions bob into shot – there may be none – but the film retains a thriller’s hook in continually obliging us to assess Rike’s tough judgment calls, and may well endure as a representative work of this moment. Fischer literalises the turbulence we’re now navigating, and asks some stern questions of our moral compasses.
Styx ends – in terms of the narrative – feeling incomplete. There are unanswered questions. It’s cinematically unsatisfying. But these are no doubt posed to prompt wider society to ask – and answer – more questions about what continues to unfold in seas around the world, as the same world turns an apparent blind eye.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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