'I know what I feel is not rational, not scientific.'

Rating: 7/10 (24 June 2017)

LIFE lacks life. Screen writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have attempted to offer the audience the feeling of discovering life on another planet but the story is slime and gets lost in the camera work and fascinating (for a while) floating crew and corridors of a space station. Daniel Espinosa directs – or rather manages the action.
Six astronauts aboard the space station study a sample collected from Mars that could provide evidence for extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet. The crew (Ryan Reynolds briefly, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Kiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, Ariyon Bakare) determines that the sample contains a large, single-celled organism - the first example of life beyond Earth. Bu things aren't always what they seem. As the crew begins to conduct research, and their methods end up having unintended consequences, the life form (oddly octopus like) proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected.
Despite the paucity of story the fine cast manages to make us care about each other and each tragedy they encounter and offer a quiet warning of how perhaps exploring life on other planets is not that great an idea.
Special effects (Celia Bobak et al) are spectacular but become wearing, and the camera work by Seamus McGarvey tends to produce vertigo. Interesting film, but slight. Grady Harp, June 17