Life (2017)

... is more about the opposite. Either I'm getting old, or the SciFi thriller genre is sometimes too extreme, sometimes too mild. Or both = I'm getting older and I prefer the mild version = "Passengers" let's say to an extreme one as we have in "Life".

Well... To be fair IMDb gives it clearly as: horror, but I didn't buy it from the trailer. Seems it is one indeed. At least 3 scenes are quite rough, long and very graphical. We have an unknown life form discovered on Mars, which follows the classical recipe: group killer, take them one by one, for the crew members of the International Space Station. Who change quickly their priorities from researching the alien to preventing it reaching Earth. Guess how this story ends?...

I expected something like "Alien", and this partially confirmed. Indeed, the story is quite similar. The problem is again about how is this brought on screen. It doesn't really work throwing around cliches (some a bit weird) about life, to build up like a gritty movie, and to fallback on campy horror from time to time ending it like this with the end credits entry. It's true that it offers a necessary tension relief, but something's not really right in all this... Clearly, the opposite way of build-up as a funny slasher, hitting you with some morals in the end, a la "Cabin in the Woods", has much more impact. There are also problems with the direction - here I've seen the weirdest ending twist construction. It's clear from the start how it will go on. That's why the question in the previous paragraph is rhetorical. But in the movie, when the time has come it sort of telling you that's it, then that it's not, that again it is... Oh well... Overall it was acceptable, but I'm still waiting for something on par with "Sunshine" or at least "Pandorum".

Rating: 3 out of 5