Is There Anybody Out There?

There have been plenty of films throughout cinematic history that have dealt with the idea of alien life forms both hostile and friendly being out there somewhere in space just waiting for the opportunity to interact in one way or another with humanity.

In regards to hostile beasties who have anything but our best interests at heart Alien and the sequel Aliens are the standard by which all other movies of that type must aim to aspire to and most of the time even the best attempts of this genre fall short of those lofty standards.

Which brings us to the film that this review is about which of course is none other than LIfe (not to be confused with the 1999 comedy starring Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy) which is directed by Daniel Espinosa (Child 44) and features an all star cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson and Hiroyuki Sanada.

The plot sees a team stationed on the International Space Station where they are tasked with studying an organism that has been found on the planet Mars. Long story short they soon conclude that the organism is in fact proof of life in the solar system outside of that on Earth. Before long it grows and begins offing the crew one by one in a variety of ways until we are left with Gyllenhaal and Ferguson left to do battle with the creature (Reynolds surprisingly doesn't last long at all and is picked off fairly early in the film).

Events culminate with the Space Station being badly damaged which leads our heroes to use the last two lifeboat pods left at their disposal. Gyllenhaal takes his pod with the alien organism locked inside with him and aims for deep space in order to make sure that it cannot cause any harm on Earth whilst Ferguson takes her to head home. The film ends with a pod landing in the ocean and a fishing vessel approaching it only to discover that Gyllenhaals pod is the one that has landed on Earth and that the alien is actually now going to be able to run rampant and wipe out all life just the way it did on Mars, a task made easier by the fishermen opening the pod door to aid its escape.

So is Life a good, great or terrible film? Well it certainly isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, it is well shot and the acting is of the standard you'd expect from the cast involved. The problem is that it doesn't offer anything new to the genre and reeks of been there, seen it and bought the t-shirt. I will give the effects department a great deal of credit as the alien looks great and I'd like to say that it looks fairly unique but again I am left with the feeling that I have seen something similar before.

Life is written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who have previously worked together on the likes of Zombieland and Deadpool but there is none of the sharp writing style we have become accustomed to in their previous work although I guess this type of film doesn't really lend itself to that style.

The other issue I have is with the incredibly predictable twist ending which even I saw coming despite the fact that I am beyond terrible at spotting such things.

As I have already said Life is not a bad film but by the same token it is not a great film either, rather it is somewhere inbetween which means for my money it is worth a viewing but is not necessarily a movie you have to rush out to see on the big screen as waiting for the blu ray release will suffice. This in all honesty is a bit of a shame as I was really looking forward to this movie but was left feeling distinctly blah about the whole thing.

All of which brings me to my score which this time out is going to be 7 out of 10 putting it on a par with the likes of Patriots Day and The Hateful Eight.