Review – Life

There is nothing special about Life.  Everything that happens in this movie we have seen dozens of times before and done better each time.  Even with its stellar cast, nothing in this movie is exciting, original, or scary, causing the movie to do an overall dud.

The movie is about a team of scientists aboard the International Space Station that discover a rapidly evolving life form, that caused extinction on Mars, and now threatens the crew and all life on Earth.

Life is two parts Alien (1979), one part Gravity (2013), and one part The Thing (1982), which are all three incredible movies, so you’d think this would be an incredible movie, right?  Wrong.  Ever have a brownie where the baker forgot the sugar?  It’s not good.  In the cinematic brownie that is  Life, the sugar is originality, because this movie has none and that’s what ultimately kills the movie.  Everything in this movie you’ve seen before, from the characters, to the plots, to the twists, everything.  For being classified as a ‘thriller’, this movie is hardly thrilling.  Not once did I jump or feel an ounce of suspense or worry about the characters, which is one of the worst things a movie can do.

Even the cast of Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rebecca Ferguson can’t salvage this film.  I love all three of these actors, particularly Gyllenhaal, who I think is one of the best actors we have working today, and they do try to make us care about them and their mission, but they fail, as do the other members of the ship.  Due to poor writing, the film makes these astronauts dumber than the Armageddon (1998) oil-drilling astronauts and gives the alien creature more of a personality.  Even the best actors get caught in bad scripts.

Life is an unoriginal, borefest that brings nothing new to the sci-fi/thriller genre.  Watch one of the other movies I mentioned above, even Armageddon.  They’re all far better than this one.  Life is lifeless.

MY RATING – 1/4

Did you see Life? What did you think? Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.