Review of Life (2017) by George S — 01 Apr 2017

I expected a lot from this movie. I figured it would have a very interesting plot, and with two big name actors like Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, some compelling screen time. Instead, what we get is a fairly slow, plodding beginning, with very frantic action at the end. This is an Aliens movie rip off if I ever saw one, and not very original. But I could live with that. What I can't live with is the absolute stupidity of the crew, and somehow expecting us to buy it. These astronaut's critical thinking skills are nil. The CDC doctor, who talks about firewall protocols, doesn't know the first thing about such things. If you truly are concerned about preventing infection/invasion of an organism, alien or not, then you have to be able to contain and destroy them.

Ultimately, they were all undone because the pair of rubber gloves failed in the experiment/containment unit, and the alien got out into the lab. So, the 1st firewall failed, now the creature is in the lab area. And they leave one of the guys in the lab. It's never explained why, but maybe the CDC doctor thought the alien was hungry, because ultimately, it eats the guy in a very messy scene. But if they actually had a well thought out firewall system, then they could've got the 2nd guy out, and suffocated the creature, or blew it out into space from the lab. But what we get is before it eats him, we have about 5 minutes of the guy trying to kill it with a flamethrower. Now, what's the worst thing, besides atmospheric decompression in a space ship? You guessed it, fire. So after the guy is eaten, the flame thrower is still partially on, and triggers a fire suppression system. Normally that's good, but in this case that's bad because now the alien, who looks like a giant calamari can escape through the fire system vent, and eventually does.

What follows is basically a horror version of the three stooges in space, because they all are pitiful, and can't stand up to what is a 4 foot octopus. Now, if you view this movie from a conspiracy theory standpoint, then they sent stupid astronauts who would end up allowing the creature to escape, kill them, and ultimately infect/invade the earth. Either way, it's not really worth your time, until you can watch it with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 soundtrack.