Life
Life is directed by Daniel Espionoza and stars Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhall and Rebecca Fergeson as astronauts on the International Space Station. They intercept a returning probe from Mars and inside the soil samples they find a tiny organism. They nuture it, it escapes and well... shit ensues.
Yeah no. Life's not worth your money. The biggest problem is I feel like it skipped the entirety of its first act. The movie seems to be devoid of any time spent with the characters before shit kicks off so any deaths or revelations later on have no weight behind them whatsoever. To give some perspective to my comments about the first act being missing, the alien creature gets out and starts killing people about 10 minutes into the movie.
Visually it's a stunning movie as you can see from the trailers but the direction I felt was pretty poor. No real attempt was made to build tension or utilise the claustrophobic nature of the setting. I never felt on edge, uneasy or to be honest scared at all. Oh and the whole thing made me feel very nauseous. Lots of fast sequences as the camera is following people through the ISS and spinning around all over the place in the process.
The stakes are never fully realised in my opinion and any attack the creature makes was so underwhelming because the blood and gore is well below what I expected. The creature too is laughably intelligent. He knows stuff about the ISS within seconds of coming to life that would take people several PHDs to work out.
It seemed to me like it never really knew what it wanted to be. It takes a lot of tropes from a story prospective from the Alien franchise but at the same time feels a lot more lighthearted and a lot of failed attempts at humour. I was so disappointed with Life, wish I could be telling you how great it is and recommending the hell out of it but, best not. As a popcorn flick, it's okay, it does its job, but I expected so more.
Life gets a C-.
Yeah no. Life's not worth your money. The biggest problem is I feel like it skipped the entirety of its first act. The movie seems to be devoid of any time spent with the characters before shit kicks off so any deaths or revelations later on have no weight behind them whatsoever. To give some perspective to my comments about the first act being missing, the alien creature gets out and starts killing people about 10 minutes into the movie.
Visually it's a stunning movie as you can see from the trailers but the direction I felt was pretty poor. No real attempt was made to build tension or utilise the claustrophobic nature of the setting. I never felt on edge, uneasy or to be honest scared at all. Oh and the whole thing made me feel very nauseous. Lots of fast sequences as the camera is following people through the ISS and spinning around all over the place in the process.
The stakes are never fully realised in my opinion and any attack the creature makes was so underwhelming because the blood and gore is well below what I expected. The creature too is laughably intelligent. He knows stuff about the ISS within seconds of coming to life that would take people several PHDs to work out.
It seemed to me like it never really knew what it wanted to be. It takes a lot of tropes from a story prospective from the Alien franchise but at the same time feels a lot more lighthearted and a lot of failed attempts at humour. I was so disappointed with Life, wish I could be telling you how great it is and recommending the hell out of it but, best not. As a popcorn flick, it's okay, it does its job, but I expected so more.
Life gets a C-.
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