Leave The 'Alien' Movies to Ridley Scott

Rating: 3/10 (26 March 2017)

In all fairness, "Life" was a good in theory, bad in practice.
How I felt about the movie going in was much different from the experience, and then leaving the theater. I went from, this is kinda cool, spooky, emotional, scary, even more emotional, to a plot twist at the very end that simply was wrong for the movie. That left me with a very poor taste in my mouth about "Life", so my review of this movie is focusing on its negative aspects.
First I will start by saying DID have potential, had the writers, producers, and director had not taken the angle that they did. Originally, because of the ending, I had given the movie 2-Stars, but due to the theater's wonderful recliner seating, I was able to muster- up another star.
Right from the beginning, the story was moving way too fast...is this action, drama, horror, comedy, science fiction? I was left aimless trying to figure out which genre to choose from. The character development did become a little more developed as the movie progressed, but it did so at odd and unpredictable times. This left me asking "What?" too many times during the film.
Catching a probe carrying Mars soil samples with an 'arm' at that velocity would have torn the arm off the movie-version of the International Space Station. This is where "believable-fiction" went straight to "science-fiction".
Next, they find a single celled organism in the soil samples, alien in nature, and let's wake it up! I think Ryan Reynolds said it best: "This is some real Re-Animator s***". The children of the Earth name it "Calvin". In what seems to be an extremely short period of time, "Calvin" becomes a multi-cellular organism and starts interacting with its environment. Why? Writer's Scapegoat - it's alien, it has and endless possibility of script-killers!
"Calvin" goes into survival-psycho-killer mode because the foolish scientist let the gas valves leak into the chamber, injuring our newly found friend, and effectively putting it in a 'coma'. But, like a little kid, let's bathe the creature in even more food and while we are at it, let's take a zapper and start poking at it. No wonder it crushed your hand and tried to kill the whole crew. I'd be pretty pi**ed off too! Really begins to make you wonder what mail-order- university these crew members studied at...
NASA has a backup plan (of course!) of sending a Soyuz capsule as a booster rocket to dispense of the crew (whomever may be left), the creature, and the station to prevent the Earth from being contaminated by "Calvin".
This is where it completely defined the movie: The Plot Twist. Plan - get Calvin and Jake Gyllenhaal into an escape pod where he nobly sacrifices his life for mankind, shooting himself and "Calvin" into deep space, and have the other female crew member use the second escape pod and get back to Earth safely to live to tell the tale...
Had the movie ended on this note, I may have given it 6, maybe 7 stars (and that is pushing it). Nobility self-sacrifice for the greater good are traits that are hard to come by these days.
BUT NO! Through the cutting between the capsules launching and what was happening inside the capsules, you really BELIEVED this is what was happening. Come to find it was the female crew member's capsule that was flying off into deep space, and Jake Gyllenhaal's capsule splashing down on Earth with him and "Calvin" - Apocalypse!
The worst horror-plot twist in existence, and they had to go and put it in "Life".
Don't spend the money in the theaters - rent it, get it from Red Box, Netflix, Hulu, or wherever it ends up.