Review of Life (2017) by Spangle — 24 Jun 2017

Life may not re-invent the wheel, but it nonetheless shows that the wheel still has some spin left in its spokes. A film about the discovery of life on another planet, Life is another film that shows the dangers that could await us via these new lifeforms and the lack of knowledge we have regarding them. With its multinational crew trapped inside a spaceship with a single-celled organism named Calvin that quickly becomes a starfish-shaped monster from the depths of hell, Life is a rather typical science fiction horror film about people trapped in their metal casket, awaiting death. Fortunately, through strong direction from Daniel Espinosa, a good cast, and nice design all-around, Life becomes a film that may be cliched and run-of-the-mill, but manages to embody the strongest elements of the genre and miss many of the pitfalls.

Slowly building tension and constantly leaving the audience hanging before indulging in its horror movie antics, Life takes over a half hour to actually kill any of the crew. Introducing us to the cast, Calvin, and setting the scene in the lab where Calvin is held, we learn the intricacies of the ship, each members' role on the ship, and follow along as they study Calvin to determine what kind of life they found on Mars. Meanwhile, back on Earth, everybody is elated to find out life exists beyond Earth and eagerly awaits their return. As things begin to head south rapidly on the ship, Espinosa's film had managed to build the tension up tremendously and equally matches it with the proper sense of awe and anticipation. This is the culmination of humanity's constant search for life and, after initially falling in love with what they found, they discover that they should not have tried to find other life. Thus, Life becomes not just an expertly paced and structured horror film, but a great tale of disappointment and heartbreak with the whole crew grappling with both the crushing failure of the mission and the fact that they will all die. As a result, the film is not horrifying in the typical horror film sense - though it absolutely is, which is a credit to Espinosa's patience in the first act and the rising action - but is also horrifying on a truly human level. It is not just that they found an alien that wants to kill them, but it is their own ambition and hunger to find where they came from that is killing them and punishing them for their hubris. It is terrifying to watch play out and Espinosa manages to keep the audience constantly on the edge of their seat.

While the character's chaotic and hectic struggle to escape this alien can often get confusing, it never ceases to be compelling. Espinosa smartly drops in shots where the camera seems to be in zero gravity alongside the characters, often resulting in completely upside down shots or ones where the camera just floats freely in the room. Preventing it from ever getting nauseating, this technique is quite immersive and makes it feel as though Calvin is coming right for both you and the characters alike. By trapping the camera and the audience inside the ship with the protagonists, Life manages to be an intensely claustrophobic experience. However, the film manages to be equally as thrilling in non-claustrophobic moments when crew members must fix something outside of the ship or at the very end of the film. While it may be a bit predictable that it is coming, the ending is nonetheless just as chill-inducing as Kevin McCarthy's "They're coming!" warning at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While nobody yells that the alien is coming or anything, it is an ending that instills the same feeling of dread that made that classic science fiction film really end with a punch. Though Life is not as strong of a film and its ending feels rather obvious - no matter how much Espinosa tried to obscure this fact - it is still an ending that leaves the audience with a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach.

Unfortunately, however, Life is certainly imperfect. Its predictability, no matter how good those predictable pay-offs may be, remains an issue. This predictability is largely derived from just how cliche the film as a whole is with the film never really taking time to try and make the experience unique. Aside from no robot character, the film plays out like a re-hash of Alien right down to the remaining crew members using escape pods to try and get away. While this film brings up "quarantine" and "protocol" more often than Alien, it nonetheless hits many of the same beats and leaves us constantly guessing where the new lifeform may be hiding as we watch along on a heat sensor used by the crew members to see where everybody is at a given time. Yet, in saying that, it is hard to not classify Life as the film that Ridley Scott should be making with his Alien prequel series. It is straight horror, tosses in some ideas about the dangers with finding new life on other planets, and yet never gets too philosophical.