Alien meets Gravity with a dash of Evolution

Rating: 7/10 (22 September 2018)

Spoilers ahead
Reading some of the other reviews there seems to be a concensus that "Calvin" was piloting the pod at the end so I want to address this first. It wasn't. Jordan (Jake Gyllenhal) spelled out what his plan was: the escape pod is auto-piloted to return to earth and he was going to override this to steer the tragectory away from the planet. He literally said if he takes his hand away from the controls too soon the autopilot would take over again. It's this that we see, Calvin gripping his arms so he couldn't reach the controls. Whether this was intentional (not in the sense that Calvin knew doing so would kick the autopilot in but more likely it knew whatever Jordan was doing would be a threat to it's life) or it was just attacking him and doing so was a fortunate move from Calvin's pov I don't know.
As for the rest of the film. Yes it's clear that the plot is heavily influenced by Alien and obviously fails to reach the bar set by that classic. But I think setting the story closer to home, in present day and on a craft that actually exists adds a sense of "what if?" that Alien doesn't have.
The acting was superb, though Ryan Reynolds was playing Ryan Reynolds a little too much for my liking. Yes the decisions the crew make during the film are questionable (and that's being polite), but I can let that go in order to move the plot along. If they had applied logic the movie would have finished an hour earlier. And the logic at least was not as bad as that seen in Prometheus or Alien: Covenant.
I only really have two criticisms of the film.
1 was that Calvin growing from a single celled organism to the cgi squid that seems to be the favoured depiction of alien lifeforms by Hollywood these days in so little time was too reminiscent of the single celled organism in Evolution. But at least there was an attempt at explanation. Alien is one of my all time favourite films but one thing I've always disliked is that the chestburster grows into the Xenomorph we all know and love in very little time without seemingly consuming anything to accelerate its growth. Here at least we're told it's consuming things like coolant to make it grow.
2 is that early on in the film Calvin survives outside in space for approx 10 mins and the crew assume it's storing oxygen. Later the crew try to kill it by trapping it in sections of ISS and starving those compartments of oxygen. Sorry but if it can survive the vacuum of space an oxygen free room ain't gonna do diddly.
Overall I doubt this film has much rewatchability but it was a decent effort with some great 'made you jump' moments that happily filled a couple of hours. The twist was obvious from the moment the lifeboats undocked but did not lose its suspense despite this. It's set up nicely for a sequel that I doubt we'll ever get. Which is probably a good thing, if this film was Alien closer to home a sequel would undoubtedly be Aliens closer to home.