Go watch something else (review includes spoilers)

Rating: 1/10 (7 June 2017)

"Life" takes place on the international space station orbiting Earth, where an international crew of astronauts and PhDs are investigating soil samples that just arrived from Mars (in a manner than defies all the known laws of physics and chemistry). They discover an alien life-form and help it grow into a monster that eats them all.
The film sucks on multiple levels and watching it felt like having voluntarily exposed myself to 2 hours of psychological torture. There are no characters to root for because they are all both incredibly stupid and equally helpless. The creature is both smarter than all of them combined and physically indestructible. At no point in the film do you feel that the characters stand a chance of survival.
The creature develops out of a single cell and within a few days it knows how to operate complex technology and how to psychologically manipulate humans, with the single purpose of eating them all alive. It's as if Albert Einstein, Hannibal Lector and The Hulk were fused inside the body of an indestructible, headless octopus, that just happens to be helped at every turn by an incredible set of coincidences. And while you waste time asking yourself "How?" and "Why?" people keep getting eaten. The film ends with the alien finding a way to steer itself to earth in a capsule. At that point you can only imagine that it proceeded to devour and brutally dismember every living thing on earth.
Now I find myself asking why does this film even exist? It appears to have been made for the sole purpose of allowing audiences the "pleasure" of seeing around 10 people being brutally and very graphically devoured by an alien organism. Nevertheless, there are two possible "points" that the director was trying to make, none of which I like or agree with.
1) Humans are weak because they suffer from things such as morality, empathy and curiosity - whereas the alien just wants to kill everything it comes into contact with. The humans seem to get into endless trouble during the film every single time they try to help one another. The message is clear: looking after yourself is good and caring for others only makes things worse.
2) A number of times in the film Jake Gyllenhaal talks about his time as a medic in Syria during the civil war. He got so disappointed in humans on earth that he now feels more comfortable in space, away from all the mess. But what he finds in space is a lot worse and it ultimately destroys him and all life on earth. The message: there's horror on earth, but trying to escape it only makes things worse and brings even more horror.
Politically speaking, this makes the film an ode to libertarian conservatism, to staying put, to not asking uncomfortable questions, to minding your own business, to self-interest, and to passively accepting that this is what ensures the best of all possible worlds. To this I say: go watch something else.