The 219th review!
Today Lincoln turned one month, and he’s a healthy baby! Today, we all went to Target and I dropped a heavy container on my big toe and it hurts. But before that, I checked out a movie. i09 described it as “The next big leap forward for science fiction horror!” So, I was thrilled to check out...
Life (2017)
Yeah, I didn’t like it. Anytime those family of websites hype up a movie, I never particularly enjoy them, but this is the only one I outright didn’t like. A group of scientists onboard the International Space Station are studying a clump of cells that were found on Mars. Eventually the cells start to move, life outside Earth is confirmed and it gets named Calvin. Naturally the alien turns hostile, or it thinks everything else is hostile and proceeds to murder everything on board.
I find movies where the antagonist to be overpowered boring. It no longer becomes watching people in a fight for survival, it becomes a time waster until they all inevitably die. This creature is super strong, resistant to fire, can survive a long ass time in the vacuum of space and is ridiculously smart. If I could steal a line from Little Nicky, it’s “like Jeopardy smart.” Not only that, Calvin is equipped with the strongest plot armor I’ve ever seen. This creature is able to succeed with the perfect combination of all the scientists turning dumb then literally every piece of good luck falling into place for it. One scientist becomes obsessed with it, setting off a chain reaction that leads to its escape, it manages to break out of the lab because a flamethrower just happens to get too close to a sensor, it gets on board after ending up in the vacuum because it just so happens they’re running out of fuel and they’re being pulled back to Earth, then it learns some Metal Gear level of stealth as its eating a dude’s leg. At least the Aliens franchise the characters were realistic and were, for the most part, capable despite being normal people, plus there were ways to actually hurt the Xenomorph.
For the most part, it’s not terrible, just not anything special. I liked the beginning when you get to meet the crew. It has Ryan Reynolds playing the only character he really plays, but toned down. And you know what? I like that character. Ryan Reynolds can play the charming goofball and it doesn’t really get old because he plays it so well. The other characters are nothing special but they bounce off each pretty well, and they’re fun to watch doing sciencey things. That’s of course before the creature turns crazy, because they all get a case of the stupids.
There’s not too much to say about it. I enjoyed the chase scenes where they’re trying to get away because they’re in zero gravity, it was cool seeing them float away as fast as they could as the Martian nips at their heels. There are tense scenes as well, and while we all knew the alien was going to be evil from the trailer, it was cool in the beginning when it was still trapped inside their testing box. My biggest problem was the ending, and that’s when the alien’s plot armor is its strongest. I can’t go into too much because it’ll spoil it, but it gets annoyingly and unbelievably smart. You can tell the makers of the movie were trying to go for a sequence that would make you gasp, but I just rolled my eyes at the cliche way it went. There are worse ways you can spend an hour and a half, but I think if I were channel surfing and came across this again, I’d keep on clicking.