Life

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2017)

Not to confused with the great Sir David Attenborough documentary series, or the catchy song by Des'ree, from the one or two trailers I saw this looked like a new Alien style, a scary movie in space, I was looking to what it had it to offer, directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House, Child 44). Basically six multinational astronauts are aboard the International Space Station (ISS): American senior medical officer Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal), British Quarantine Officer Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), American pilot and engineer Rory "Roy" Adams (Ryan Reynolds), Japanese system engineer Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada), British biologist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare), and Russian mission commander Katerina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya). The crew have successfully captured a space probe returning from Mars with a soil sample, they are tasked with studying the sample, which could contain and prove the first evidence of extraterrestrial life. The crew determines that the sample contains a large, single-celled organism, the first example of life beyond Earth, Hugh is able to revive the dormant organism with atmospheric adjustments and glucose, it grows quickly, the organism is Calvin named by school children in America. An atmospheric accident in the lab causes Calvin to become dormant, Hugh attempts to revive Calvin with a mild electric shock, Calvin reanimates, but becomes hostile and escapes the containment cube into the room with Hugh. Calvin devours a lab rat and immediately evolves and grows in size, Rory enters and rescues Hugh, but Calvin latches onto him, David locks him inside to keep Calvin in containment, Rory attempts to attack the organism with fire, but it is resilient, Calvin forces its way into Rory's mouth, killing him from the inside. Calvin emerges once again evolved and even larger, then manages to escape from the room through an emergency fire suppression vent, Hugh believes the lack of breathable air on Mars is what must have kept Calvin dormant. With communication cut off from Earth, Katerina performs a space walk to fix the antenna, Calvin has consumed coolant as nutrition, it escapes through a valve on the antenna, then attacks Katerina, her suit coolant system is ruptured, she effectively drowns inside her suit. Calvin attempts to reenter the station through the thrusters, the attempts to stop Calvin result in the ISS entering a decaying orbit, Sho informs the crew they need to use the remaining fuel to go back into a standard orbit. But this would mean allowing Calvin back in, but they formulate a plan to seal themselves into one module, and to vent the atmosphere into the rest of the station to make the organism dormant. Hugh suddenly has a cardiac arrest, he is resuscitated, but Calvin had attached itself to his leg and was feeding off him, he is now paralysed, Calvin is now a much large tentacled creature, it attacks the remaining crew. Cho seals himself in a sleeping cabin pod, Calvin tries to break the glass to get to him, Miranda and David realise the creature has ingested a tracker from Hugh's suit, they track it, using Hugh's body as bait, they lure Calvin away from Sho and trap in an area to deprive it of oxygen. Earth Control received the SOS call from the ISS, they have sent a Soyuz capsule, to push the station into deep space to prevent any possible danger, Sho presumes it is a rescue attempt, he rushes to board the arriving ship, as soon as he opens the hatch, Calvin attacks him and the Soyuz crew. Sho's actions cause a docking breach, resulting in detachment of the capsule, this spirals back and crashes into the ISS, temperature and oxygen levels are dropping rapidly. The only survivors, David and Miranda, realise that the decaying orbit will mean re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, aware Calvin could possibly survive re-entry, they plan to use the two remaining escape pods programmed to auto-pilot towards Earth, David will sacrifice himself to lure Calvin into one pod to fly into outer space, while Miranda will return to Earth. David leads Calvin into his pod and launches it into space as Miranda launches hers, her pod is hit by debris and knocked off course, while David is attacked by Calvin and struggles to send his pod into outer space, the two pods then divert. The earthbound pod performs a controlled re-entry and lands in the ocean, near two Vietnamese fishermen from Hạ Long Bay, but as they approach, it is revealed it is David's pod, he is encased in a web- like substance, while Miranda's navigation system has failed and she screams in horror as she drifts into outer space, David is still alive and tries to warn the men not to attempt a rescue, they open the door and more fishing boats arrive, the screen fades to black. Also starring Alexander Nguyen as 1st Fisherman and Hiu Woong-Sin as 2nd Fisherman. The cast all do their parts well, it is indeed very similar to Alien, people trapped in space with an unwanted inhuman visitor that is indestructible and will kill them one by one, it is not that original, but there are plenty of easy to swallow thrills and tension to entertain, and the twist ending is disturbing, a worthwhile science-fiction thriller. Good!