Linoleum 2023

Cameron Edwin Jim Gaffigan is a middle-aged astronomer stuck in a quiet, unfulfilling life in small-town Ohio. He once dreamed of space and exploration, but today he hosts a lackluster science-education show on a local station, juggling a fractured home life with Erin Rhea Seehorn, who is divorcing him, their outspoken teenage daughter Nora Katelyn Nacon, and their quiet young son Sam. The weight of disappointment presses on him as he drifts through routine days, always feeling he’s missing something bigger.

A surreal moment jolts his ordinary world: while cycling home from work, a red sports car drops from the sky and lands with a crash near him. Inside the car lies an unconscious man who bears a striking resemblance to Cameron himself. At dinner that evening, when Cameron recounts what he saw, Erin waves it off as a car hitting the curb, a plausible explanation that keeps fear at bay. Yet the next morning, Cameron finds a newspaper article about the man in the incident—Kent Armstrong Jim Gaffigan—a wildly successful astronaut whose identity mirrors his own, planting seeds of doubt and obsession.

In Nora’s high school, a new student named Marc Gabriel Rush shares Nora’s birthday, sparking a curious connection between them. At Cameron’s workplace, he disrupts a meeting between the producer and Kent, who remains unharmed and memory-free about the incident. Privately, the producer reveals PBS is interested in the show only if Kent becomes its host, reducing Cameron to a mere “creative consultant.” Cameron resists, but the station’s control—being the majority owner—forces his hand, and he walks away from the project. When he returns home, the family awaits, but the house is suddenly treated as a crime scene after authorities reveal a Russian spacecraft has fallen into Cameron’s backyard, prompting the family to relocate to Erin’s sister’s house.

Marc, after school, lingers in Nora’s orbit and is soon picked up by Kent Armstrong. On a neighborhood stroll, Marc encounters Cameron and the two sneak around the wreckage, leaning toward the belief that the craft is American in origin. Cameron, recalling once wanting to be an astronaut, imagines a future where he could build something from the wreckage. A mysterious elderly woman watches from a distance as Cameron and Marc tinker in the family garage, to Erin’s growing frustration.

Night drifts into a web of secrets and far-reaching memories. Marc and Nora traverse the town under the guise of a casual night, with Nora insisting she is exploring her sexuality while Marc jokes about it being a date. The pair form a strong, quiet bond that grows in parallel with Cameron’s increasingly obsessive experiments with the wreckage. Cameron visits his father, Mac (the elderly resident at a care facility), a former NASA engineer who battles dementia yet retains astonishing technical recall. Cameron brings Mac back to the family home, where the old room’s astronaut costume—with a cracked visor—reawakens memories of a brighter past.

In a twist that threads memory with present danger, Marc finds Cameron in the backyard late at night, and the two admit they see Kent as a flawed idol rather than a hero. Cameron’s rocket experiments intensify, and the elderly woman appears again, a silent observer who seems to know more than she lets on. The pair’s late-night scheming gives way to a looming question: is the past intruding on the present, or is the present reshaping the past?

Halloween arrives with its own tensions. Marc confesses he has an invite to popular girl Darcy’s party, which stirs jealousy in Nora. The two decide to host their own Halloween bash at school instead, drawing Darcy’s ire as they promote the event. In class, Darcy publicly humiliates Marc, prompting Nora to retaliate with a punch that forces both parents to intervene on the ride home. Kent—who has been a menacing presence in the background—confronts Marc and forbids any relation with Erin, even threatening him with violence. He lashes Marc’s forearm with a small scourge and coldly warns, “you’re doing this to yourself.”

The next day, Cameron discovers Erin in the garage and the two reconcile, refocusing their energies on the DIY rocket project. Halloween night sees Marc slipping out to join Nora at their party, with a photo of the two kids captured in their astronaut-esque costumes—Marc’s helmet surprisingly undamaged. Mac awakens in bed in the astronaut gear, with the elderly woman beside him, showing him a picture from years ago—the same shot of Nora and Marc at the party. It becomes clear that Mac is actually Cameron in a dementia-weaving memory, and the woman is Erin; the film dissolves into memories overlapping with the present as Erin asks if Cameron recalls his father trying to run him over that night, triggering shifting settings and identities.

A medical emergency jolts the unfolding memory again, and Cameron clings to a fragmented belief that “the launch” is about to begin. Erin insists there was never a launch and no rocket ever existed, but she eventually accepts the harrowing truth as Cameron is carried into an ambulance. Meanwhile, Cameron and Erin, in the real world, begin “the launch” of a large 2-D cardboard rocket—the prop that has haunted his show and his life all along. The scene flickers between the ambulance, the launch, and a lively Halloween party, all disrupted by the revving of Kent’s sports car as it hurtles toward Marc at top speed.

In a final confrontation, the film cuts to Cameron as an adult facing Kent, echoing Marc’s earlier words about disillusionment with his father. The exchange ends in tragedy: Kent swerves the car, shattering Marc’s helmet but sparing him from fatal harm, and in a simultaneous stretch of time, Cameron and Erin ignite the rocket and flee in the ambulance. The collision, the crash, and the launch become a symbolic collision of lives—memory, choice, and the dream of a life not lived—pulling Cameron toward a surreal, emotionally resonant ending that audiences are left to interpret.