Review of Life (2017) by Mad M — 17 Jun 2017

(Spoiler Alert) Ryan Reynold's character was mercifully killed off at the end of the first act. And I was jealous. Ironic then, since Life didn't have much else going for it other than star-power.

If the craft is for telling stories, Life didn't have one of its own. Clumsy use of plot device and cliche barely propelled it to 103 minutes, all of them painful and obvious. It suffered from a lack of technical consulting (or the advice was ignored) leading to countless flaws that poked holes every few lines into what little suspension of disbelief the acting was able to establish.

For its entire duration, you get the feeling you've seen this film before. And you have. Life falls back on Hollywood cookie cutter formulas, rehashing Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indian trope, the part of a villain played as an alien.

It borrows heavily from the Alien series but more so from John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing, and to that Life's runners owe credit for all they borrowed, although an apology would be more appropriate.

Hollywood can do better, and has, and recently, with mindful titles like Arrival, The Martian, Gravity, not to mention classics like Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Life is light years from of those, and decidedly not unique. Audiences have become more sophisticated. Hollywood would do wise to keep up.