Good looking movie with unbelievable plot and mediocre characters

Rating: 4/10 (23 March 2017)

The Good:
Believable, big budget special effects. Some decent jump scares and squirm-in-your-seat horror.
The Bad:
The characters were generic and boring. The acting was often spotty and not consistent with the situation (more poor direction than bad acting I think). The Martian creature came from the soil on Mars where it had to hibernate to survive, yet it could survive freezing cold, burning heat, no oxygen, space vacuum and everything else the crew could throw at it. And it pretty much ate everything (including cooling fluid). Lazy science to aid lazy plot sequences.
The Ugly:
Unrealistic behavior from professional astronauts and scientists. Every scene seemed to be a result of a poor decision putting the crew at risk. Everything seemed predictable and there was little-to-no tension.
Unlike the brilliant Alien - where you felt the protagonist (Ripley) and crew did everything right, yet fell victim to a horrifyingly believable alien (except for Ripley and the cat of course) - the crew in Life pretty much seemed to randomly do things, forget things, then remember things, and generally make the worst of the situation, while terrorized by the "super-alien-jellyfish" thing. I spent most of the movie thinking "wait... what? why?". Mediocre film from a mediocre Director.