Now
that NASA is not so temporarily out of the manned space flight business, we
have to hitch a ride with the Russians if we want to visit the International
Space Station (ISS) that we helped build. Perhaps we should just leave it to
them, if it really is the veritable playground for hostile extraterrestrials
this film suggests. The good news is scientists have confirmed the existence of
an alien life-form, but the bad news is it will inevitably start killing
everyone in Daniel Espinosa’s Life (trailer here), which opens today
nationwide.
Due
to technical malfunctions, the ISS crew nearly fails to retrieve the fateful
sample from their Mars probe, which would have ended the film prematurely but
prolonged the characters’ lives. Naturally, once they start analyzing the
sample, they find some kind of alien entity within. Nicknamed “Calvin” by driven
lead researcher Hugh Derry, the creature starts out as an amoeba like cellular organism,
but soon grows into a hissing, slithery alien not unlike the one from a certain
1979 science fiction-horror film we could mention. For a while, Calvin appears
to go into hibernation, but it rouses in a foul mood when Derry gives it a series
of electro-shocks. What a super idea that turns out to be.
Before
you can say “in space nobody can hear you scream,” Calvin starts killing off
crew-members one-by-one. He has a rather nasty technique of invading the body
through open orifices and then exploding outward—again not wildly dissimilar
from the Ridley Scott classic (it truly casts a giant shadow over Espinosa’s
entire film).
So
yeah, it is a heck of a lot like Alien, but
not as scary. However, what really works here is the ISS setting and easy-going
camaraderie of the crew. Espinosa and production designer Nigel Phelps really
give viewers a sense of what it is like to live and work on the ISS. We feel
like we understand exactly how the station operates, thanks to some
surprisingly tense duct-closing sequences. Furthermore, Life arguably has some of the best weightlessness scenes rendered
to-date on film. Screenwriters Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick also
differentiate the crew-members’ personalities much more than the typical “bug
hunt” movie. Yet, those merits make it even more disappointing when the film stops
trying to be original and resigns itself to ripping off Alien during the third act.
Don’t
get too attached to anyone, but while he is around, Ryan Reynolds is jolly good
fun to watch as Rory Adams, the ISS’s cocky space cowboy. Ariyon Bakare and Hiroyuki
Sanada add tragic heft as Derry and Sho Kendo, respectively. Although Olga (Twilight Portrait) Dihovichnaya’s
Russian Captain Golovkina is more of a stock character, she gets the best death
scene.
