I’ve been looking forward to this movie since I first saw the preview months ago.  It’s like John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), set on the International Space Station, with the terror of the first Alien (1979) thrown in for good measure.  For a while in its middle section I thought it could be the best new science-fiction movie of the millennium.  Alas, it cannot sustain its excellence for its full length, and it settles for a gimmicky red herring ending instead of the powerhouse climax for which I was rooting.  But it’s still pretty darn good.

A probe which has visited Mars is intercepted by the ISS crew, assigned to learn if any alien organisms have been found on the Red Planet.  You betcha!  After some coaxing out of dormancy and feeding, one scientist (Arlyon Bakare) makes the mistake of personal contact with the flower-like little critter, and all hell breaks loose.  The other astronauts (Jake Gyllenhaal, Olga Dihovichniya, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada) work together to try to contain it, and then to kill it, but the organism that wiped out all life on Mars has more on its mind than they can imagine.

Daniel Espinosa’s film makes great use of the claustrophobic (but decidedly roomy) space station setting, and a couple of the death scenes are truly remarkable.  Oddly, the film is least convincing when it is at its most intense, during an unexpected rescue effort.  But it boasts a great monster, a constantly growing beastie kind of like the Blob with tentacles.  And despite a few too many quiet moments as the astronauts try to regroup (I would think real astronauts in this situation would be increasingly hyper, trying everything to stop the killing, instead of resting and reciting poetry), the story is energizing and harrowing.  Cold, hard, logic is in good supply, but the human survival instinct is a hard thing to conquer.

I really enjoyed Life, despite its blah title.  It is appropriately frightening and creepy, bloody and bombastic.  I would have preferred the big action sequence to have been slowed down some, and some of the quieter moments dispensed with altogether.  But this is a cautionary tale of the highest order, reminding us that when we do finally make contact with the Other, it might not be the best or smartest move we ever make.  I’ll borrow the tagline for 1965’s Crack in the World to finish this thought: “Thank God It’s Only a Motion Picture!”  ☆ ☆ ☆.  14 April 2017.