Inert Life fails to thrill
Life (R13, 104 mins)
It’s the moment the crew of the International Space Station has been waiting eight months for. The Mars Pilgrim 7’ s rocket is within their grasp, returning with a payload of soil samples from the red planet. But when flight engineer Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) recovers it, via collision rather than collection, they discover that it has been damaged inflight.
To exoscientist Hugh Derry’s (Ariyon Bakare) relief however, what it contains is not only unharmed, but provides the first incontrovertible proof of life beyond Earth.
Eager to share their findings with the wider world, a live broadcast is carried out and with the help of a primary school, the single-cell organism is dubbed ‘‘Calvin’’. However, as Derry begins his studies and probes, Calvin’s rapid growth and intelligence starts to alarm him.
With its vertiginous, floating tracking shots, tight confines and appropriately both starry and international cast, Life had all the potential to be a rollicking sci-fi story.
Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that major shadows loom over Swedish director’s Daniel Espinosa’s ( Safe House) film.
They come in the form of Ridley Scott’s 1979 haunted-house-in- space Alien and the more recent, Oscar-winning Gravity. Both films are clear inspirations for this, with double-act Rhett Reese and Paul Wenick also cribbing from other sci-fi classics and clunkers like Species, Apollo 13 and The Thing.
The screenwriting duo seem like an odd choice, given their speciality in action-wisecrackery ( Deadpool, Zombieland), for Life is one of the most po-faced sci-fi movies released in quite a while.
And unfortunately in this case, with great sincerity comes a strange inertness. Despite offering a couple of genuine jumps for audiences, there’s a distinct lack of terror in proceedings.
Whether that’s due to an overwhelming sense of deja vu or the fact that Calvin (who has surely scuppered the chances of that name appearing in the Top Baby moniker lists for the next while) looks like a cross between Little Shop of Horror’s Audrey 2, the creature from James Cameron’s The Abyss and a jellyfish.
To be fair, Espinosa and his team do attempt to shake things up a bit. But an early surprise is straight out of the Deep Blue Sea playbook and the late twist is perhaps a little too telegraphed and Twilight Zone- esque to truly redeem proceedings or even set up anticipation for a potential sequel. – James Croot