It’s no fun watching people die.
Alright, I’m going to level with you. I really wanted this movie to exist. No, I almost need movies like this to exist. I’ve been asking for this type of movie for ages. It’s an adult sci-fi horror movie of original material inspired by a film old enough to have children. Alien is 39 years old, and technology has come a long way. For starters, CGI has gotten better, allowing for cooler and more creative alien technology. Technology has also advanced to the point where we don’t need to depend on artificial gravity, allowing for more interesting movement of both the camera and the actors. And, the world has changed a bit since 1979; we could use another Alien to reflect our new society.
Life is no Alien. It could be. It very well should be. Life has the most failed potential I’ve seen in a movie since Passengers. Even though they’re failures for completely different reasons, their flaws start in the same place: a bad script.
Six astronauts are on a mission to intercept a probe from Mars and investigate the samples it collected. Among the samples is a tiny single-celled carbon-based life form, so small they raise it in a petri dish in a sample cage. The alien gets gathers more cells and forms a translucent organism and a personality. At first, it’s like a pet. When the scientist is examining it, the organism plays with the scientist’s hands. The astronauts name it Calvin and joke about who gets custody. As he grows, he becomes a translucent jellyfish-like form with five appendages. Calvin is organic and smart, and gets pissed off when you try to electrocute him. And, he’s also hungry because nobody ever feeds him. Guess what he likes to eat?
This is a slasher movie in space. I mean, let’s face it, Alien was also a slasher in space, albeit an expertly directed slow burn slasher in space where the tension is on a steady ramp until sirens are blaring, lights are flashing and Ripley is frantically running around a space ship threatening to self-destruct. But, Alien was smart. All of the people in Alien are doing smart things all the time. Life is stupid. Everybody in Life is making the dumbest possible decision at any given moment. Which astronaut is making the stupid decision varies from scene to scene, but somebody is always making the worst decision all the time. These idiots deserve to die.
Which brings us to the main problem of Life: it expects you to care about these astronauts. Because this film is only 95 minutes long, the six characters never really get a chance to differentiate themselves from each other before the killings begin. One guy has a baby, and a woman really likes Goodnight Moon. But, they’re all pretty bland cannon fodder. Yet, every time somebody dies or is injured, it’s treated like the biggest tragedy in the world. The whole movie stops, sad strings are sad, and people take the time to mourn even though there’s a goddamned liquid jellyfish that’s trying to eat them if they don’t figure out how to stop it. Co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool, Zombieland) are constantly stopping the movie just to wag their fingers at you for coming to a horror movie and wanting to see people die. Characters lecture each other about how tragic it is that their friends keep dying, even though Calvin might not be killing out of hatred but out of survival (though, to be fair, they did shock Calvin with an electric wand just before he got all pissed off). The Catch-22 is that they never give us anybody worth caring about. Yes it’s tragic when people die but it’s not that tragic when these thinly drawn characters die. And, it certainly isn’t tragic enough to stop the movie cold every time.
The sad part about all of this is that Daniel Espinosa knows how to direct tension. When the movie is acting like a goddamned horror movie, Espinosa’s direction is spot on. Characters are screaming conflicting advice at each other, the movie creeps ever closer, and the spatial relations of killer to victim are spot on. Calvin’s movements (he had a “wrangler” in the credits) are smooth and fast, creating a killer alien ready to haunt your dreams. Yet, by the time you get to the most tragic reading of Goodnight Moon in existence, you’re about ready for everybody to die a horrible death.
Life could have been so good. Fuck it, Life could have been great. It had all the elements: Decent direction, a great alien, a nice looking set, and a solid story base to build on. But, it constantly squeezes itself so hard the life drains out of it. That Calvin occasionally crushes people in giant squid hugs feels like a metaphor for this movie. Ultimately, Life kills itself with its own tragic self-hugging.