Very exciting

Rating: 7/10 (10 October 2017)

Some probe that collected samples on Mars returns and docks to the ISS. The scientist there starts feeding a cell found on Mars. It does respond and grow. More cells grow that are like stem cells, they serve several functions and aren't specialized. They each are muscle, nerve, and photoreceptors at once. The little creature does respond initially to touch. At some point it goes into hibernation. The scientist decides to zap it with electricity to wake it. It works, but now the creature that looks like a starfish, is angry, grabs the guy's hand and breaks it. It then devours a mouse nearby. Then it grabs the electrical probe to cut through the glove and now it escapes. Another astronaut, a big mouth American decides to play cowboy and rescue the scientist from the isolated lab. He does succeed with the rescue, but fails in his attempt to burn the alien creature, which is called Calvin. It in turns grabs him, kills him and somehow feeds off him and grows even more right in front of the eyes of the rest of the crew, which now tries to keep the firewall intact. But Calvin escapes to the outside where it survives no problem and destroys the ISS's communications. When the commander does a spacewalk to fix comms, the creature kills her as well.
Calvin makes it back inside and terrorizes the rest of the crew. Earth control sends another spaceship to dock to the ISS and push it into outer space because occasionally the ISS falls into decaying orbit threatening to make it to earth. And apparently, as always in these movies, on top of everything, they are short on fuel. The issue here is that no matter what, the martian lifeform cannot make it back to earth. That's also the mission of the English CDC astronaut on board--ensure by any means possible that it doesn't happen.
By now, the remaining crew decide to use the escape pods. One to send Calvin to outer space and one to make it back to earth. But only one person can fit in each pod.
Life surprised me. I didn't expect such an entertaining and exciting movie. Like most of these space movies at first the camera work is just too orchestrated and annoying in all it's turns and rotations. Eventually once we focus on the story things improve a lot. There's some attempt to give this ultra-multicultural cast of characters some depth, but it didn't really work. Not to mention that I didn't care about any of these people. Calvin steals the show, as a visually fascinating creature, at times beautiful yet menacing. Much of what happens in Life is the usual stuff that happens to characters in sci-fi space movies, nevertheless, it's done so well in this movie that it had me completely involved.