Life is a terribly stupid movie, but it’s dumb in that fun B-movie way, a trashy space thriller full of dumb-sh*t dialogue and wildly convenient circumstances. Despite its stupidity, though, Life is decently scary because space is naturally horrifying as we are instinctively afraid of its vastness and convinced that some wet-looking space bug is going to rise from its depths to destroy us. Life taps into those latent fears and delivers thrills in its own magnificently stupid way. So stupid. So incredibly, amazingly stupid.
Basically a bottle episode set on the International Space Station, Life starts with the crew happy and joking which means they’re all going to die. (Happy people don’t belong in space. Space is terrible and will punish you for your joy.) The crew is composed of the doctor (Jake Gyllenhaal), an Army veteran who has been in space for over a year because he hates people and can’t stand to be around them, which is understandable, really. What isn’t understandable is when, later in the movie, he suddenly announces that he is the pilot, a totally separate job that requires its own years of specialized training. I understand a doctor being a hobby pilot, but a full-fledged space shuttle pilot? Here’s how stupid Life is: The space doctor announcing he is also the pilot barely registers on the Richter Scale of Dumbest Sh*t In This Movie.
Anyway, besides Doctor Pilot there is Scientist (Ariyon Bakare, Tyrant), Lady (Rebecca Ferguson), Guy (Hiroyuki Sanada, Sunshine), Captain (Russian actress Olga Dihovichnaya), and Ryan Reynolds. Their mission is to intercept a pod from Mars and see if there is any sign of alien life in the dirt samples. Turns out there is a space squid with a vagina face an adorable child on Earth dubs “Calvin”. Scientist immediately becomes infatuated with Calvin and starts poking it with sh*t. Anyone who has seen a space movie knows this is a bad idea, but apparently the movie Alien doesn’t exist in this universe.
But it does exist in ours, which is a problem for Life. Written by the Deadpool team of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Life is really just a B-grade Alien that also borrows heavily from the Venom origin story from comic books. (So much so that I legit thought it was a secret Venom prequel by the end.) It’s completely derivative and has nothing new to offer us, but director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) has a flair for action sequences. It’s not brilliant or anything, especially in a post-Gravity world—oh that’s another one, large chunks of Life seem like deleted scenes from Gravity—but Espinosa puts together a few above-average sequences that manage to generate real tension and fear even as the characters spew the stupidest dialogue in the world at each other.
Which is what’s fun about Life, really. You’ll laugh at the bad dialogue, cringe as Calvin stalks the crew, and stare in utter disbelief as Doctor Pilot unironically recites Goodnight Moon when all hope seems lost. I cannot stress how stupid this scene is, it is the absolute stupidest thing I’ve seen in recent memory, a really extraordinarily stupid moment that deserves a special Oscar. What makes it really special is how seriously everyone is taking it—Ryan Reynolds is the only one who appears to realize what they’re making is less 2001: A Space Odyssey and more Battlefield Earth. Life is stupid as f*ck but enjoyable anyway, like any B-movie worth its salt. I’m not sure anyone involved realized they were making a B-movie, but that’s what they did.
The Martian organism (which is dubbed “Calvin” in honor of an elementary school back on Earth) begins to rapidly evolve in the ISS laboratory, but otherwise appears to be benign… until one day when, following an accident in the lab, “Calvin” suddenly turns hostile and becomes an immediate danger to everyone onboard. As the various people aboard the ISS struggle to contain this newfound threat and keep themselves alive in the process, there’s one thing they agree on: they cannot allow this creature to make its way to Earth, even if that means sacrificing their own lives in order to do so.
The latest addition to the long list of movies descended from Ridley Scott’s classic Alien, Life is a surprisingly middle of the road offering, considering the caliber of talent involved on both sides of the camera . While the film takes steps to mix up the well-trod formula for a story about humans encountering not-so-friendly extraterrestrial life in outer space, it falls somewhat short of fulfilling those ambitions. Despite some promising elements, Life amounts to a middling (and derivative) sci-fi horror/thriller that never fully realizes its potential.
Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (of Zombieland and Deadpool fame), Life is partially successful at taking the now-familiar concept of people being trapped in a spaceship/space station with a monstrous extraterrestrial (once pioneered by Alien) and adding some clever variations to the narrative proceedings. Problem is, in order to achieve this, Life winds up incorporating plot contrivances – some of which inadvertently make its twists and turns all the easier to anticipate – and under-serving its various human characters, from a development standpoint. Similarly, the “monster” in Life is creepy and innovative in certain respects, yet it doesn’t always operate in accordance with a consistent set of rules (or one that evolves logically) in the way that, say, creatures such as the Xenmorph and Predator do. This reduces the tension in Life, making it all the more easy to predict when the “monster” is going to find some miraculous way to get the upper hand on the humans that it’s stalking.
“Calvin” is a solid CGI creation that kills its victims in an effectively disturbing manner in Life, making it one of the film’s more unique elements. Director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) and the movie’s cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (Godzilla, Nocturnal Animals) do a commendable job of visually mapping out the International Space Station’s interior layout, allowing Life to better maintain a claustrophobic atmosphere once it sets Calvin loose on the movie’s hapless astronauts. At the same time, Life recycles a number of techniques used in other recent sci-fi offerings set in space (the Gravity-style extended take near the beginning of Life, for example) without matching their achievements in terms of quality and/or bringing much that’s new to the table. Life thus falls short of establishing a rich sense of atmosphere and striking visual style of its own – coming off more as a mashup of elements from other films as a result, rather than one with its own identity.
Similarly, the three main lead actors in Life – Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson – give solid performances in their own right, yet are saddled with characters that are never fully fleshed out in the film. Reynolds as Rory/”Roy” is one of the more memorable players in the film, despite being a standard variation on Reynolds’ tried-and-true, foul-mouthed smart aleck persona. Gyllenhaal, by comparison, delivers a fine performance as the ISS’s longtime resident David, yet the character never evolves beyond being two-dimensional (even with the references to why David prefers life in space to Earth). Ferguson is solid in her own right while playing the disciplined and by-the-book Miranda, yet her character likewise fails to leave much of a lasting impression.
Life Ariyon Bakare Hugh Derry Life Review
Ariyon Bakare in Life
Ariyon Bakare (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell), Hiroyuki Sanada (The Wolverine) and the Belarusian actress Olga Dihovichnaya round out the main ensemble in Life, playing the additional members of the ISS crew that crosses paths with Calvin. In typical horror movie fashion, the supporting players in Life are basic archetypes that are provided with a slight amount of emotional depth (Bakare’s Hugh Derry, for example, is a scientist who was wheelchair-bound when he was on Earth), in the hopes of getting the audience invested in their fates. As such, Life struggles to sufficiently flesh out its side characters – making it all the more obvious that they exist in the movie primarily to be hunted by Calvin, no more or less.
Although it makes for passable genre entertainment on its own, Life is also a routine sci-fi horror/thriller that amounts to less than the sum of its parts. While Life‘s cast and crew have succeeded in delivering more inspired genre films in the past, Life fits pretty squarely into the Alien mold and lacks the personality to stand out as a memorable addition to that sub-genre. Nevertheless, those who are in the mood to watch some unsuspecting humans have a not-so-friendly close encounter of the third kind, may find that Life does a derivable job of delivering the goods and want to give it a look at some point (if not necessarily in theaters)
