Life (2017)

Life (2017)

IMDB Rating 8.3/10

Six astronauts aboard the space station study a sample collected from Mars that could provide evidence for extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet. The crew determines that the sample contains a large, single-celled organism - the first example of life beyond Earth. But..things aren't always what they seem. As the crew begins to conduct research, and their methods end up having unintended consequences, the life form proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected

Director: Daniel Espinosa

Writers: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds

R | 1h 43min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

 

IMDB link Here

Movie Rating ★★★☆☆  

Jake Gyllenhaal hits the retro rockets for sub-Alien space horror

 Like the anonymous phone call in a horror film that turns out to be coming from inside the house, Life is a sci-fi thriller about a contamination crisis: a crisis that goes on pretty much uninterruptedly for around an hour and three quarters. It’s a serviceable, watchable, determinedly unoriginal film starring Jake Gyllenhaal about a parasite-predator in a spaceship, a creature which can only survive by feeding off a pre-existing host. The expressions on the spacepersons’ faces here may give a guide to the feelings of Ridley Scott and everyone involved with the 1979 classic Alien when they see it. Life is indebted to Alien, to say the least, although its final, perfunctory hint of a conspiracy doesn’t approach Alien’s powerful satirical pessimism.

Actually, Life’s screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (known for box-office smash Deadpool) seem also to have been as impressed as everyone else by Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi drama Gravity, with their scenes of lone astronauts wobbling about outside the spaceship which is always liable to get smashed to low-tech smithereens. At the last moment, Reese and Wernick and director Daniel Espinosa hit their retro-rockets for a neat little 180-degree twist, thankfully reversing the prevailing mood of sucrose fatalism. It has the audience leaving the cinema with ironic grins on their faces.

 Gyllenhaal is the quiet, introspective Dr David Jordan, Ryan Reynolds plays hot-tempered and fiercely loyal crew member Roy Adams, who is a good friend to the chief scientist Dr Hugh Derry, played by Ariyon Bakare. Rebecca Ferguson plays the supervising medic Dr Miranda North and Olga Dihovnichnaya is another scientist, Katarina Golovkin.

The crew’s memories of the kids’ bedtime book Goodnight Moon are supposed to lend a little gentleness and humanity to the film, and a bit of a narrative breather, but this third-act conceit only succeeds in replacing a creeping sense of tiredness with sentimentality. Much better is the jeopardy and tension of the movie’s final sequence. He leaves it very late, but Espinosa brings his film back to life.

Read full review at The guardian

A Mars probe brings back lethal organisms in Daniel Espinosa's space-horror flick  

An Alien-derived creature feature that would be serviceable (if underwhelming) under ordinary circumstances, Daniel Espinosa's Life faces the unenviable prospect of emerging less than two months before Ridley Scott's new chapter in that franchise. Like its eponymous carbon-based critter, which spends most of the movie rushing from one corner of a space station to another as our heroes try to starve it of oxygen, the movie may suffocate in the anticipatory atmosphere surrounding Alien: Covenant, and the PR boost from this unmerited closing-night SXSW slot shouldn't help much. Insatiable genre fans who do buy a ticket will likely send lukewarm responses back to the wait-and-see crowd.

Like Scott's original film, this is an ensemble affair whose cast of characters dwindles in number at a steady clip. Surprisingly, the best-known members of its cast are not necessarily MVPs: Even if they may have more to do, A-listers Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds register no more solidly as distinct characters than, say, Ariyon Bakare's Hugh Derry, the scientist who makes first contact with the alien, and soon regrets it.

The picture struggles to find a satisfying rhythm as the members of this multinational, co-ed team get slooshed up by Calvin or suffer related lethal mishaps. Each dies valiantly; few enjoy a moment of glory. And then there were two — heroes whose names won't be revealed here, who face that familiar challenge: Destroy this vessel before its extraterrestrial inhabitant can make its way to the blue planet below. Genre fans won't be too shocked by the way that plays out. But most would be quite surprised if Life's hints at a sequel lead to even a single spinoff, much less the decades-long afterlife enjoyed by Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon's versatile face-hugger.

Read full review at Hollywood reporter