Another Saturday night, another movie to watch. I have to say that HBO has been slacking when it comes to the movies so I found another rental on the PlayStation store. This week’s movie was Life. I had seen the previews when it was about to be released in the movie theater but like most of these movies here totally missed out on it. Keep reading to see if it was worth the wait.
Life is about a team of astronauts and scientists, played by Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, and Ariyon Bakare, aboard the ISS who are conducting experiments to see if they actually found extraterrestrial life on Mars. At first everything is going great, as it usually does in these types of movies, until something goes horribly wrong. This will lead to a set of horrible events as it’s now the crew’s main focus to not let this creature reach Earth.
Although the movie was short and felt a little rushed at times, it still kept me on the edge of my seat. I enjoyed watching the team start off with this small single-cell of a creature, named Calvin, develop and grow into something that everyone thought was going to be amazing. Scientists being scientists though always have to go a little further and when the future of the first sign of life on Mars is jeopardized they’ll do anything to try and fix that. Well that ends up basically ruining everything as this once docile and willing to learn creature turns into a killing machine. The main mission after that is not to let this creature get to Earth where it might not be able to be stopped. This will set off a chain of events that are crazy and end with a huge twist.
Now about that huge twist… If you’ve seen the movie, how many of you figured out that huge twist coming at the end? You know I don’t’ like to spoil stuff in my reviews, but I have to say that I totally called it at the end because of what happened during the escape pod scene. Even though I knew what was going to happen, it was still pretty shocking and I enjoyed that the movie ended like that.
While this is an ensemble movie I thought that everyone worked together great and made it really feel like they were a team aboard the ISS. Saying that though, about mid movie you can see that the real star of this movie is Jake Gyllenhaal who gives a pretty stellar performance of the guy who wants to stay in space because of his past and is kind of a meek guy who just does what he’s told. When he takes charge though it shows that he’s the one you should have been paying attention to this whole time.
Overall I give this movie a 4 out of 5.
This had to be the shortest space type alien movie that I’ve ever seen and even though it felt a little rushed at times, it came together for a stellar ending. I have to say though that I would have liked a little more background on the characters, maybe see where they actually came from instead of them talking about it, and some more on how they got the samples from Mars but that’s just me. I would say that if you’re a fan of Alien and Arrival, which you can read my review here, then give this movie a chance. If you think that Alien type movies have been way over done and you’re tired of them you’ll probably want to skip this movie, but I will say that it’s kind of different and has a completely different vibe about it.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 