Maybe if I hadn't seen "Alien," or "Aliens," or "Alien 3," or....

Rating: 6/10 (26 March 2017)

SciFi fans; if I say "A space ship crew is trapped in space with an unstoppable life form that they must prevent from getting to Earth...." what comes to mind?
If you don't start naming "Alien" titles, I don't think you're really a SciFi fan. And that is my problem with "Life," I've seen this story in various permutations too, too many times. And "Life" despite the fact that it has a really neat creature and spectacularly good production values, wastes my time by telling a familiar story with familiar characters. I found absolutely nothing in this movie that felt original except for the development of "Calvin." Early on, the science and the CGI depicting the creation of the creature gave me chills and great hope that something new and interesting was coming. But eventually the movie found its rut, somewhere between the afore mentioned "Alien" films and John Carpenter's "The Thing." And once it fell into that rut, the only thing the makers did was decorate. "Life" is a beautiful film, with some Earth-from-space shots that made me melancholy for the fact that I will never be able to go there and see that. But once I realized that I had seen the story before, the cinematography and special effects were ALL that held my interest.
Maybe for movie-goers who haven't seen the earlier versions of "Life," this will be "their version" of "Alien." "Life" is well-made, well directed and well-acted and may be worthy of becoming the "Alien" franchise of this generation.
One final note, and I don't think this is a spoiler: At the beginning of "Life" the narrator delivers the information that Pilgrim was hit by space debris and knocked off course. I think that could foreshadow the resolution to a situation left unresolved at the conclusion of "Life."