Review of Life (2017) by Tal G — 08 Apr 2018

Good space horror, but disappointingly inconsistent.

The first part was wonderfully tense and evoked a nice sense of paranoia. The music was very ominous and there was a sense that something's wrong, or is going to be wrong soon. Then it just kind of wobbles around during the second act, feeling like it's going through the motions of a claustrophobic space horror movie checklist of events. It was hard to keep my attention on the movie at times, some scenes during that second act just dragged and were badly paced. It simply wasn't consistent.

Then the third act kicks in and it manages to end the movie on an impressively morbid note.

Jake was awfully underutilized, his characterization was lacking, kind of a waste of his skills. I can understand why it happened though, he was just 1 guy out of a team of 6. They all needed time in a short movie, it was destined to happen. The other people in the cast were well done; the Russian mission captain, the wheelchair bound biologist, Ryan's mechanic type guy. Everybody had a distinct personality. Just sad that they couldn't be used in more creative ways.

There were some nice looking shots here and there, but mostly they were just serviceable. The music did a better job, especially during the ending scene. It just kicked it up a notch and instilled this terrifying sense of doom and horror. Beautifully done against what was happening on screen.

The creature's design itself was great. Creative, very alien (although a bit squid-y), intelligent looking.

The movie fumbles but in the end manages to pull it together for a nice finisher, but those mistakes and parts of bad execution do take this movie down a couple of pegs. Would love to see a sequel though.