We've Seen It All Before

Rating: 6/10 (29 March 2017)

About three quarters of the way through "Life," the new science fiction thriller from Skydance Media and Columbia Pictures, one of the characters muses to his colleagues, "Life's existence requires destruction." Even as simple pop psychology or a pun, it's a fairly prophetic statement: The character who speaks the line of dialogue has only a few more minutes before being dispatched by an alien in a particularly colorful way, and it occurs at a point in the picture when the audience has mostly given up hope of any sort of conventionally happy ending.
Set in more-or-less the present day—one character makes a reference to being a schoolboy at the time of the Challenger tragedy, and the math works out about right—in "Life," the six members of the International Space Station crew are tasked with recovering an interstellar probe vessel returning from Mars with a sample of soil.
In analyzing the sample, the crew's biologist discovers a dormant single-cell organism, and is able to revive the specimen through the use of scientific stuff. Naturally the organism begins to grow.
At first the life form is fairly innocuous, resembling a cutely hungry little dandelion bud. And as news of the extraterrestrial discovery flashes across Earth below, the united schoolchildren of the world vote to name the alien life form "Calvin." But it becomes quickly apparent to the members of the space station crew that Calvin isn't as adorable as he seems—the organism continues to grow and grow, and eventually develops an attitude. And as usually occurs in this type of enterprise, the number one item on the alien hit list is people.
Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who previously teamed on "Zombieland," "Deadpool" and one of the "G.I. Joe" pictures, acknowledge the influence of 1979's "Alien" on this picture, although "Life" actually is more reminiscent of the 1958 picture "It! The Terror from Beyond Space," which heavily influenced the filmmakers responsible for "Alien." As in the 1958 picture, "Life" makes a persuasive case for the future inclusion of flamethrowers among the other tools routinely assigned to astronauts.
But Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa, who previously directed "Safe House" in 2012, is also plainly influenced by Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" in portentousness if not cinematic quality.
The major problem with "Life" is that nobody involved seems to be able to decide whether the picture is science fiction or horror, so they try to cover all the bases.
The cast of the picture seems to be game enough to play along. Actor Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the space station's melancholy physician, Dr. David Jordan. Jordan has been on the space station continuously longer than any previous astronaut, at least long enough for his muscles to have begun to atrophy.
Jordan explains to a sympathetic colleague that he prefers space to life on Earth because of the relative peace. But as Calvin continues to grow in both size and hostility, Jordan must begin to rethink the notion, no matter what might be going on below.
Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson, recently of the latest entry of the "Mission: Impossible" film franchise and "The Girl on the Train," appears as the space station's quarantine officer Miranda North. North is continually attempting to isolate Calvin to one part of the station, but is usually about one step behind and one or two seconds too slow. Quarantine becomes a major dilemma in "Life," and finally explains to everybody's satisfaction the reason the original Apollo astronauts were sequestered for weeks following their return from the moon in 1969, a precaution many at the time thought preposterous.
And the genial, benign Ryan Reynolds, quickly emerging as a major Hollywood star, appears as the space station's selfless engineer and chief problem-solver, Roy Adams. Reynolds also seems to have been something of the catalyst behind the project: He's the solitary member of the cast to have previously worked with many of the picture's production team: "Life" screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Warnick also adapted Reynolds' breakthrough hit, last year's "Deadpool," and the actor costarred with actor Denzel Washington in "Safe House," director Espinoza's previous English language picture.
All hands onboard seem to be enjoying themselves as actors scooting themselves weightlessly through the various corridors of the space stationand frequently slamming hatches behind them in an effort to escape becoming a quick lunch for their Martian guest.
"Life" ultimately works better as horror than as science fiction, and the picture is rated R for enough space carnage to almost be called "Close Encounters of the Lurid Kind." In fact, the picture has a little fun at the expense of Steven Spielberg's 1977 classic science fiction drama by satirizing that film's famed advertising slogan, "We Are Not Alone," with their own posters, which read "We Were Better Off Alone."
Unfortunately, there's no such humor in the picture itself, with the possible exception of keen-eyed viewers perhaps noticing that the alien as it grows begins to resemble H.G. Wells' description of the invading Martians in his 1897 novel "The War of the Worlds."
Otherwise, this is not a happy movie. "Life" takes a page from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" playbook by killing off one of its major stars in the second reel, and also leaves the door wide open for a sequel. And the picture's finale is genuinely nightmarish, although you'll probably figure out where the movie is heading a good five minutes before it arrives there.
But as these movies go, "Life" at 111 minutes has good production values, state of the art visual effects, and persuasive performances. It's not a bad picture, just an awfully messy one. And if the movie is not the classic of the horror or science fiction genres you were hoping for well, that's "Life."