Life
(2017): Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, directed
by Daniel Espinosa. Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson,
Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, and Olga Dihovichnaya. Running
Time: 103 minutes.
Rating:
2.5/4
Life, a new entry in the
monster-horror-in-space genre by Daniel Espinosa, has a title and a trailer
that hints at an at least somewhat-poetic exploration of the nature of life
itself, how radically different life from another world could be for us, and
what inherent dangers there could be in establishing first contact. This, at first, made it sound like it could
succeed as a spiritual sister to last year’s superb Arrival. Alas, it does
not.
The
film opens with the team stationed in the ISS preparing to receive a probe
returning from Mars. Once received, they
begin to examine tiny samples of soil from the planet, searching for
incontrovertible signs of life beyond Earth.
They find it rather quickly, a single-celled organism that begins to
grow and develop rapidly once they find the right atmospheric gases to
“activate” it. Dubbing it “Calvin,” they
watch as it quickly grows from a single cell into a small, amoeba-like creature
with arm-like appendages. At first assuming
it to be harmless, things start to go south very, very fast when the creature
attacks the lead scientist studying it, escapes from its cage, kills a crew
member, and soon has them facing the ultimate survival dilemma; if they escape
the station and return to Earth in order to preserve their own lives, they risk
the creature jumping on board and potentially risking all life on the
planet. If they stay to keep it
contained, their lives are effectively forfeit.
It’s
about as solid a setup as you can get for this sort of intended pulse-pounder,
and to its credit, this is a solidly-made film (for the most part). There is some excellent cinematography,
especially in the beginning, where the camera floats and drifts and even flips
upside down alongside the crew in zero gravity.
The score is functional, if a bit by-the-numbers, and the editing and
pacing fit the sort of tone the film is going for.
Sadly,
it all starts to come to pieces by the end.
The script is barebones to a fault, hinting at a larger story about some
sort of Committee (and we know none of the background of the probe and samples
and why now of all times they anticipated finding life from Mars). Keeping the audience in the dark about the
larger picture is perfectly fine when handled well, but the meat of the main
story isn’t enough to carry itself, and the tidbits from the larger story we
get almost feel like they could have made a more interesting movie.
Much
of the shortcomings in the horror aspect of the film come down to the resident
monster. Calvin is certainly an
intriguing, octopus-esque design, but there are too many odd occasions where
the point of view switches to “Calvin Vision” to show what the monster sees, and
at a certain point in its development it gets what is definitely a face of some
sort. Part of the thrill of seeing this
sort of threat from an alien life form lies in the mystery of what it is and
what it can do; keeping the design ambiguous and unlike anything from Earth, as
well as having us be as ignorant as the crew as to Calvin’s whereabouts, would have
done much to keep the film afloat.
What
rescues much of film from itself are the performances- the characterizations of
each crew member are as skeletal as the narrative, but they commit enough to
their performances to *almost* make up for it.
In the case of the lead scientist, Ariyon Bakare actually manages to create
the only real emotional arc in the entire film, which involves the film’s best
bit of visual storytelling.
Life is by no means a bad film- in many
aspects and in many scenes it’s quite good- but there’s ultimately nothing here
that hasn’t been done before in other, better movies, so unless you are an
obsessive completist for this particular horror sub-genre, I would probably
recommend saving your money for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
-Noah Franc
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