The opening moments of the movie grabbed me with its one-shot scene as the camera continuously followed various crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) coordinating a retrieval mission of an initially dormant sample of a biological life form (later named “Calvin”) from Mars. I have a slight affinity towards one-shots such as this (my favourite ones being the mid-fight sequence in Creed and the marque hallway combat sequence in the first season of Netflix’s Daredevil). As this impressive first shot faded to black, Life gave me hope that it was going to be a different type of escapade into the usually predictable space-horror genre. Unfortunately, what follows is an over-reliance and under-execution on the genre tropes which have been already established to a much greater effect by Ridley Scott’s Alien that overshadows it’s all round decent cast and some truly grotesque death sequences for certain characters.
Life, however, never seems to be bothered by the fact that it is just this shameless imitation of Alien. Instead Life embraces this similarity to the fullest by borrowing elements from Ridley Scott’s masterpiece without ever really fleshing them out for the audience to actually care about them. Case in point, the apparently “closely-knitted” group of astronauts in Life, which is reminiscent of the crew of the Nostromo in Alien, feels awkwardly put together and in no point during the movie do you feel afraid for the group of crew members as a whole. In addition, I never truly empathised with any of the crew members in their terrifying predicament, although the movie doesn’t do much to make these characters relatable anyway, as it never allows us to properly spend some quality time with their backgrounds and motivations, which we only catch glimpses of for each character.
Another problem with the characters in this movie is just how plain dumb they are for the sake of moving the plot along. I understand if these types of rash-and-dash character logic exist in a B-horror flick because that is part of that specific genre trope that defines its specialty. But for an A –grade horror film like Life, I expected much more finesse in the writing department for these characters. Embarrassingly gaping loop holes in these characters’ logic proves to be a huge detriment to the film which otherwise could have been, at best, a well-polished homage to classic space horror films á la Alien.
Despite these monumental flaws, the biggest positive takeaway from this movie is the mesmerizing cinematography that, if anything else, makes this movie a satisfying visual treat for those who observe more closely. The camera work brilliant certain elements of the movie such the creepy, claustrophobic nature of the ISS’s hallways that Calvin roams and the whirly zero-G movements of the crew members. Moreover, the dynamically moody nature of the camera work served to intensify the movie’s atmosphere to such a degree that it infused the few good moments contained in the movie with an added impact.
Other positive highlights of the movie include the death sequences of the first two crew members (the first one being completely unexpected yet wildly gory and the second death being genuinely sad and depressing) and the performances of Jake Gyllenhaal as one of the two doctors on the ISS and Olga Dihovichnaya as, I would assume, an engineer, but who really cares about these character details when the writing of these characters are too poor to actually give a damn anyway. Another positive factor of the film, in my opinion, is it’s ending, because although it was predictable (and it is the only real twist in the movie), it was still the a satisfying one that truly sent chills running through me, albeit it was initiated by the same blatant foolishness that these characters possessed throughout the movie.
The irony of this film’s title is that its failure to imbue much life, or logic, into any of its characters hinders its sincere yet half-baked attempt to replicate one of the best space horror films of all time.
Feature Image Source: imdb.com
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