Thrilling

Rating: 9/10 (25 March 2017)

This film was quite unexpected. Okay, from the previews I had an fairly good idea what it was about, however the execution was nothing short of brilliant. In parts the film was a little slow, but then it is thriller so that is to be expected, and having parts of the film drag out does really add to the suspense. I wouldn't call it a continual, edge of your seat, suspense film, and I did eventually work out how it was going to end, but a part of that had to do with the way that they had executed the ending, but that is all that I will say about that.
So, Life is, as you probably guessed, about the discovery of life beyond the confines of the Earth. The film is predominantly set on the International Space Station and they have just collected a probe that has returned from Mars containing some soil samples. However, in the soil sample they discover a living organism. At first it seems to be quite harmless, but after an accident in the containment field, they believe that it has died so they start prodding it with electric shocks. Bad move, because it seems as if they have somewhat upset it and the creature goes from being curious to being rather mad.
This is one of the things that is left hanging throughout the film – is the creature naturally aggressive, or was it because we started poking and prodding it that it was under the impression that it was being attacked and as such decided to defend itself. If that is the case then it seems as if their first encounter with extra-terrestrial life has resulted in creating an enemy, and a pretty powerful one at that because it seems to be quite resistant to a lot of things such as fire and extreme cold. Also, a lack of oxygen results in it going into hibernation until it can breathe again.
Which raises another interesting question – life on Mars. It has been suggested in the past that the 'aliens on Mars' movies don't quite work anymore because we are quite convinced that there isn't any life on Mars, which is why John Carter of Mars was considered to be a rather bad movie. There was a time when all of the bad and nasty aliens came from Mars, but ever since we managed to find out a lot more about the planet this concept fell upon the wayside, that is until this film.
It has been suggested that this film is a tribute to the Aliens franchise, and I probably agree with that. However, the film also seems to pay tribute to the good old invaders from Mars films as well since this creature does come from the Red Planet. However, there is an underlying idea as to why Mars is now a lifeless hulk – this creature basically killed everything on it leaving it to become a desert wasteland. Since there is no longer anything to eat these creatures are now in hibernation waiting for an opportunity to come back to life.
This raises another interesting theory - the creature begins the film as a rather small creature, and only later, after it has fed, does it grow to its current size. It sort of flags the idea of what happened when we made contact with the natives of North America and other lands – it wasn't fun for the populations since huge numbers of them were wiped out by disease. This is the case with Mars because we really don't know what is on that planet, or any of the others in the solar system – with our desire to go out and explore, and conquer, a part of us doesn't seem to make the connection with the possibility that life may not only be hostile, but almost invisible. This is more so with the fact that symptoms of a disease don't come about until after the disease has reached its contagion stage.
Many films have us meet aliens and make friends with them, though we should also be aware that a lot of these films also have the aliens as being hostile, though we eventually defeat them. This may not, and probably won't, be the case if we were to encounter life beyond our planet, especially if they arrive here before we arrive there. In fact if the aliens were to arrive it would probably be more like Independence Day as opposed to ET or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or even a microscopic organism which will decimate the population before we have a chance to stop it.