A Fascinating Way Around The Alien Franchise

Rating: 8/10 (7 June 2017)

I love not knowing anything about a film beforehand, and that's lucky here, as I finished it thoroughly impressed, which ... that seems to be an uncommon opinion.
One thing that I found interesting was how this practically reboots Alien. It's as if the general fatigue over that franchise has allowed it to become its own genre, open to anyone.
I think of "Life" as psychological horror. It's certainly not that violent, and there aren't any jump scares. Its theme, which it states in the title, is the horror of the film. We see many aspects of life ... the birth of a child, the discovery of extraterrestrial life, musings on death, family, purpose. As in so many films that may fly under an audience's radar, the subtext and meaning is where the actual meat of the film is. The horror is the cruelty of nature.
I was also satisfied by the quality of the production. Absolutely believable. Compare this to Ridley Scott's "original", and there is simply no contest. Maybe at the tail-end of the Seventies it made sense to have futuristic technology look like an improvement over hole-punching machines, but it's 2017, and it's nice to see a realistic ISS, seamless special effects. And while "Life" does make a point of imitating the dialogue-over-dialogue feel of "Alien", it works just as well. In an homage to the "original", we get a brief dinner table scene with that same ominous sense that their comfort is just the calm before the storm.
The photography, the tone, the acting, the intelligent script, all beautiful. Is it satisfying for audiences? I guess not. So be it. I suspect this will receive a bit more respect in the future, possibly in the same way that Gattica did.