Life is the new sci-fi/horror film about astronauts investigating a life form brought back from Mars. Predictably, things don’t go well. Unpredictably, the movie takes itself very seriously and has a mind towards real science. Unfortunately, it doesn’t realize it’s just another alien-hunts-and-kills-people movie.
So, yes, this movie feels like its borrowing heavily from the tone of Alien. It doesn’t feel like a cheap or average monster movie – it has a brain in its head and knows that suspense and building tension is better than jump scares or dumb characters. There’s no reason I should hate this movie…. yet… I’m really kind of indifferent about it. And I have no reasonable excuse other than I was never drawn into that tension, no matter how hard it tried.
I suspect other movie goers will enjoy this movie more… but, for me, it had all the trappings of every alien-hunting-people movie yet it tried to elevate itself above the usual hoi-poloi. I credit the movie for trying REAL hard to be better than that… but for all its slow, tension-building pace, and dour, very serious-minded music, none of it came together for me.
The movie has a good cast, lead by Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. It looks great and has some very impressive camera work as everyone floats around inside the International Space Station. The movie feels scientifically pretty (but not totally) plausible and that’s interesting.
I guess what’s no-as-interesting is that they went to all the effort to make a serious-minded science fiction film about discovering life on another planet… and then that creature just eats everybody. I’d have loved if they had the courage to take the movie in another direction… but they didn’t and they wound up with just another creature feature.
So, yeah, maybe you’ll like it more than me. Maybe the suspense and craft they put into the movie will work for you where it fell flat for me. I dunno. I just spent 90 or so minutes in a somber, dour, thoughtful movie wondering why it wasn’t more interesting.
Score: 76