Life accompanies the crew of astronauts onboard the International Space Station as they recover a rocket carrying samples from Mars and discover signs of extraterrestrial life among the Martian soil. Suddenly, Life becomes an amalgamation of Alien and Gravity as the life form dubbed "Calvin" turns out to be hostile and the crew must fight for not only their survival but the fate of humanity. Those hoping Life would be a groundbreaking science fiction thriller will be disappointed to see it falls in line with the standard suspenseful sci-fi tropes already established.
However, director Daniel Espinosa lends his hand to craft a truly terrifying claustrophobic atmosphere. The tight, confined environment of a space station makes an excellent background for a thriller, so it's no wonder Alien was such a hit in 1979, but Espinosa and his screenwriters found some inventive ways to build suspense that weren't too terribly predictable. The Deadpool writing duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are responsible for Life's screenplay and while it occasionally felt derivative of similar works, I was consistently on the edge of my seat thanks to the frightening situations the duo concocted.
If I had any grievances with the writing, it would be the fact these astronauts are all exceptionally intelligent individuals who made the dumbest decisions possible in their situation. I always find it incredibly aggravating when a character does something that the audience knows won't end well, especially when the character has been established as an intellectually sound human being. Life actually reminded me a little of Jurassic World at times, wherein the scientists are dunces and the threat is suddenly able to do extraordinary things for the sake of moving the plot along with little-to-no explanation.
From a technical standpoint, Life is remarkable. The visual effects and production design were quite convincing to the point I never questioned the crew were in space and I liked the creature design of the creature in particular as a space squid of sorts. I doubt Life will earn any accolades from the Academy but it's great work nonetheless. My only complaint about the effects was that there was some blood I'm certain was computer generated because it looked very fake floating about the space station. I also found the musical score to be lacking and the cinematography to be so-so, occasionally capturing the reality of intimate enclosures and other times focusing way too much on an actor's reaction to something. An egregious example would be that the beginning of the film was largely composed of shots where the audience watches a character react to another character doing something instead of directly seeing the events firsthand, and this grew very tiresome as just an uninteresting framing choice by the director or cinematographer the way it all played out.
The talent gathered for Life are top-notch actors who lend commendable performances but their actual characters feel hollow as a result of lacking development during the first act. Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, Ariyon Bakare are all doing the best they can but none of them were really able to bring much out of their characters beyond the bare-bone characterizations provided by the script. The character motivations and general background was well established but I found it a stretch to actually care about these people once the alien started picking them off one by one.
Life does little to liven up the sci-fi horror scene but it bolsters strong direction, a talented cast, and excellent execution of a well-worn premise. Life is worth catching on home media or cable but not quite worth a trip to the theaters for anything beyond matinee ticket price. If you want to see off-brand Alien, then this is just the thing for you.
