One of the best made big-budget horror films in a very long time

Rating: 9/10 (19 August 2017)

I saw this at SXSW in Austin, Texas when it first premiered and I was blown away by it. I just saw it on DVD and I must say that I'm still blown away by it! Life is a science-fiction horror film with a massive cast and an even more massive scope. What I enjoy more than anything else in this film is the cinematography and the direction. There are several minute-long long shots all over the film, including the first shot which lasts four minutes long. It could've been very easy to just lamely film a scene and cut back and forth between the dialog, but the director and his team did an amazing job with these creative cinematography tricks. There's also this big feeling of actually being on the spaceship with these characters, which doesn't happen often I tell you what! I could feel the cold metal walls and the freezing air in space. The script is okay at best, just a generic alien- on-the-loose Alien knock-off, but so what? Alien rules, and I wasn't born yet to see it on the big screen. Even then, the directing jazzes up the story as much as possible, and the most disturbing scene in the film is when the characters read Goodnight Moon on the verge of death. Scenes like that really boost up the film, not to mention the extremely shocking ending that I still think about to this day. The CGI on the alien is also very well done and I think is still this year's top contender for the Oscar for Best Special Effects. It probably wont even get a nomination because of the Oscars always going to Marvel superhero films (which is completely fine), but I swear the texture and movements on the alien were very realistic and most of the time I couldn't even tell it was CGI. So to summarize this: The story is standard but the writers, directors, and crew do so much to make a mediocre Alien rip-off into a first-rate, state of the art horror film in space. I want more of these in modern cinema instead of lame remakes and teenager slashers!