The possibility of hostile alien life being tackled in space is an interesting subject to explore, but this film executes it poorly. If you know anything about space then you can see some glaringly obvious errors in the way that it is portrayed by the actors and visual effects. Perhaps it was too expensive to have all the actors’ tears react to the zero g or they just flipped a coin to see whose bodily fluids got to float. The lack of continuity is so distracting that even in the most dramatic moments, and there are some very dramatic moments, the audience is taken out of it by these careless inaccuracies.
Luckily for the filmmakers, space is always going to be cinematic, but it seems that they only want to reconstruct the International Space Station on film in order to destroy it. This film adds to that predictability of space movie storylines. Still, it was well-paced and thrilling, as well as having some gruesome and uncomfortable shots of the characters’ demises.
It demonstrates man’s ignorance and stupidity in the face of unknown dangers which is what drives the storyline. All of the starring actors (Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal) have some shining moments but none of them stand out particularly. The ending is a bleak and terrifying one and a bit of a shocking twist if you have a more optimistic view of storytelling.
‘Life’ is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Pep Reviews 