When humans have the losing hand

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2018)

The morning after seeing Life I woke up thinking about the plausibility of the storyline. The more I thought the more plausible it seemed. Usually it´s the other way around with U.S. alien films, especially those of the Alien lineage. Admittedly plausibility limits creativity, but Life at least seeks a balance between the two. The film speculates how a life form discovered out there, in this case Mars, might be difficult to contain. It does this in a seriously scary way, as the scientists at the International Space Station slowly begin to understand that the organism can and will outsmart them. It felt like being in a poker game and having all your money on the table, just to realize that you can´t beat the other guy after all. Many complain that the film follows well worn paths familiar from the Alien series, which would really be hard to avoid since the whole genre was begun back in 1979 by the original Alien film. I didn´t see this as a problem, to me Life tried to put some new life into the genre, so to say. Few seem to know the 2013 sci-fi film Europa Report, about a mission to seek life in our own solar system, which takes place in a ship very similar to ISS used in Life. Science in that film was if not 100 per cent accurate at least taken seriously. It almost seems that makers of Life have seen Europa Report and thought, hey, we can make a better movie with these premises. And they did a good job.