Six astronauts aboard the space station study a sample collected from Mars that could provide evidence for extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet. The crew determines that the sample contains a large, single-celled organism - the first example of life beyond Earth. But..things aren't always what they seem. As the crew begins to conduct research, and their methods end up having unintended consequences, the life form proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected. Written by

Plot Synopsis:
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majoreasy from Singapore
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Great start and I was riveted for the first 20 or so minutes...then the plot fell over from a lack of logic and slid further and further away from reality.

If the whole story was crap from the start, just from the filming and acting, I might have given this a 3 or even 5...but for something so promising to turn bad from just before the half way mark was extremely disappointing and frustrating.

As said...the beginning was nice and though there were some misplaced work ethics and contradictions, it was acceptable and we can put them down to human character flaws...

Some examples of what killed it for me...spoiler ahead...

The commander decided to not come back in to the station and instead leave the creature outside...why didn't she just push herself away...she should know that in space...a light push will keep her going forever...instead, she allowed the creature a chance to cling back onto the space station...heroic maybe, but not smart (a non-scientific-minded commander of a space station?).

Miranda and David found out that they can track the creature's movement. At that same time, Sho is still hiding in the sleep pod and to them, he is still missing and without comms...wouldn't the immediate normal human (team)reaction is to find and bring back the third last surviving member of the group? They trapped the creature in one area. Shouldn't, wouldn't they try to 'kill' it when it is trapped? No...doing something would be more taxing than just chatting with each other.

The part where Sho opened the door to the 'rescue' shuttle and air started rushing out...all three of them looked like they were hanging on for dear life not to be 'sucked' away...yet once they decide that Sho is dead and lost, the two of them can scramble away like normal zero gravity...huh?? Were they just acting out the struggle with rushing air? In the same scene...many people have died and their anger and repulsion for the creature is well known...yet, when the creature crawled from Sho to Miranda, she kept on holding him to allow it to crawl onto her...try that with a rat or a spider and we all know that it is not normal for a person repulsed by something to keep holding on like that... Instead, Sho must act the hero to rip the creature back onto himself to save her...if he had wanted to save her, he should have let go when he realised he couldn't shake the creature...

The creature was floating around outside the space station for quite a long time...but they decide at the end that it needed oxygen to survive (like humans? can we float around outside a space station for more than 2 minutes- even assuming we can handle the decompression like the creature can???) and in fact would hug an oxygen producer is laughable...please...before filming start...decide if the creature needs oxygen!!! (or love oxygen in fact)

David put the escape pod into manual mode so that he can fly himself and the creature out to deep space...and while I understand the creature is very smart and learns quickly...but so quickly that it can fly the escape pod back for a re-entry? Wow...a half degree off would either skip the pod back out to space or dive too steeply and incinerate the pod...but it did the improbable...perfect re-entry control without lessons or prior practise....frigging brilliant...

There were many more like these but I lost interest not much later after the commander died and the rest preferred to cry instead of dealing a serious problem...so didn't register much of the less glaring...

A possible Alien level movie failed by poor scripting and story...could have been a real classic...but sadly no...Hollywood's thinking that we must like space movies because the CGI is impressive needs to change...they should have a re-look at Alien, Sunshine, Moon and The Martian and understand that space can be a great movies backdrop but logic MUST still be strictly earth-bound if it involves humans...

Not yet offensive to the intellect but just sad and unrealistic.

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Hive Mind from New Zealand
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The Good:

Believable, big budget special effects. Some decent jump scares and squirm-in-your-seat horror.

The Bad:

The characters were generic and boring. The acting was often spotty and not consistent with the situation (more poor direction than bad acting I think). The Martian creature came from the soil on Mars where it had to hibernate to survive, yet it could survive freezing cold, burning heat, no oxygen, space vacuum and everything else the crew could throw at it. And it pretty much ate everything (including cooling fluid). Lazy science to aid lazy plot sequences.

The Ugly:

Unrealistic behavior from professional astronauts and scientists. Every scene seemed to be a result of a poor decision putting the crew at risk. Everything seemed predictable and there was little-to-no tension.

Unlike the brilliant Alien - where you felt the protagonist (Ripley) and crew did everything right, yet fell victim to a horrifyingly believable alien (except for Ripley and the cat of course) - the crew in Life pretty much seemed to randomly do things, forget things, then remember things, and generally make the worst of the situation, while terrorized by the "super-alien-jellyfish" thing. I spent most of the movie thinking "wait... what? why?". Mediocre film from a mediocre Director.

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Slartibarti from Germany
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This has to be the worst sci-fi movie I have ever seen (and trust me I have seen a lot). It is an insult to anyone with just half a brain. But let me give you a little taste of this gem:

It starts off with a capsule with a soil probe from Mars on its way to Earth that is out of control due to a crash with little meteorites. The ISS, where the probe should be processed, has to catch it manually, which they do by means of an extendable arm. Okay. I wont go into the physics off this, but if you have ever seen how much energy is set free when a car crashes into something with 100km/h relative velocity, you should know that such a catching maneuver is bound to go south (not even talking about the problem of maintaining a space station in geostationary orbit with nothing but little jet nozzles whilst trying to get it into a configuration such that it has low relative velocity with respect to a capsule that is headed straight for Earth with something like 20000km/h). Mind you, at this point we are 5 minutes into the movie and the science was already thrown out of the window.

Fast forward. We are in the CDC approved lab, which is a plexiglass shielded section of the ISS with nothing but a plexiglass door without any further safety precautions. Inside this section is a glove box, where they keep the probe. Turns out the probe contains life which has been idle for about 4 billion years without decaying (obviously entropy doesn't apply to aliens). Well, how about we try to wake it without further investigation? Yeah, let's do that.

Fast forward. It has grown to a hand-sized organism, but has fallen into a slumber again. It's still inside the glove box and attacks the biologist who tried to wake it by electrocuting it. It breaks his tool and his hand, which causes him to faint, and leads to its escape from the box by means of using the broken tool to cut open the glove of the glove box. (yeah, it only took earth's organisms like 3 billion years to learn to use tools, this thing does it in less than 12 hours). But fear not, whilst the life form is busy eating a rat, a colleague hops in the lab and pulls the biologist out. Surprise, surprise, the organism latches on him, so that the other guys have to seal him into the lab. He tries to burn the organism with an oxygen torch and with a flame thrower (which they obviously have ready to use on a space station, ofc). Welp, it doesn't help, this carbon-water-based organism is immune to fire (hey, because chemistry doesn't apply to aliens, didn't you know?). Subsequently, the organism kills him and eats him from the inside. The fire has caused the air vents to open, which somehow can only be closed one by one, and gives the organism time to flee.

Jup, we are not even 20 minutes into this masterpiece but the stupidity is mind-boggling. I could keep on writing about a lot more of this utterly dumb movie (like the organism being able to survive in space for prolonged times, the space station being out of fuel just at a time where it is convenient for the "plot", the organism drinking toxic liquid coolant, the space station going on a descent right after it has been pushed outward on an ascending course (because screw logic), etc.), but let me finish by saying that in the end of the movie this organism has figured out how to read instruments in an escape pod, how to steer said escape pod and how to safely reenter it into earth's atmosphere, all whilst fighting the astronaut in the escape pod. (Which was tried to be masked as plot twist. but you could see that one from a mile away). And although it has killed every astronaut basically on sight, it decided to leave this last one in the escape pod alive with itself latched to him. Wanna know why? Because it has anticipated that, despite it successfully completing the landing of a space ship, it won't be able to open the door of the escape pod and someone on the outside has to do it for it. Which some fisher men actually do, despite the fact that they can clearly see that inside the pod there is a bloody, heavily injured astronaut with a man-sized alien octopus attached to it.

I urge you to not go to watch this movie. Waste of time and money. I have suffered through it. No need for you to suffer too.

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Hao from United States
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It is rare for me to do a complete password reset to write a short movie review. I do hope that my little effort and many others' effort can alert the Hollywood that this world, the audience, still need a well written script that make sense.

This movie is a total loss and is unbearable to watch. It lacks the very basic (minimal) scientific reasoning about almost every single scene. I will list them as follows:

1. NASA and other space agency across the global are completely out of their mind in selecting astronauts. Every single people in the international space station (ISS) seem to be extremely emotional, unprofessional, and lack the very basic science knowledge. It is awful to hear that many of them have the "Dr." title. It is such a decry to the scientific professionals. These characters do not represent the people with a Phd, and the diligent people working on sending people to Mars, for real.

2. The ridiculous lab setting is a failure even for researching known disease on earth soil. There is a character who is from CDC in the movie. However, I wonder any CDC expert would ever consider attending a mission that is so cutting edge and full of unknown, with the knowledge that the lab is not as good as the ones they used to treat ZIKA in Africa. Those ZIKA labs(tents actually) has better breach protocols and protection than the 200 Billion ISS described in the movie.

3. The life form is too ridiculous. If the producer wants to make a "Alien" like creature, then please do not make a movie that uses the real life as story background. The life form consume water and is carbon based. Yet, it does not boil or explode in the bare space? I do not know if such creature exists, but it is definitely not carbon based. So, please get a scientific consultant before even considering make this movie.

I like watching super hero movies, since they just don't try to hint you to attempt making sense of the movie. It is OK to make a movie that is nonsense, as long as you do not try to deliver it as if it make sense.

I like watching science fictions, since they will at least follow some basic rules. Martians and Interstellar are pretty stretch on scientific mind. However, there is a way for you to at least explain the story. It is very boundary case, but it can make sense. I think this is the very basic principal for a science fiction movie that try to use real world as context.

The final word is that "how did this movie end up getting the ridiculous rating?" When I check the rating, even the rotten tomato puts it to 61%. This is too beyond my sense.

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crazylegscain from United Kingdom
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First let me get something out of the way, I apologise for the cretins who compare this film with such masterpieces as Alien, Aliens or any of the first 4 Alien films which are vastly superior to this piece of tripe. This film should be compared to the equally disturbing and lame "Prometheus", but those bunch of retards, sorry "astronauts" in that film obviously went to the same space academy as this sorry bunch of losers. My jaw just hit the floor from the very start of this pathetic effort. Catching containers from Mars like you were fishing for Sticklebacks in a pond? Are you ****in kidding me? Then scientist guy starts playing with an ALIEN life form like he's just picked a bogey out of his nose! While wearing kitchen gloves! I don't know about you but that thing was doing some freaky sheet and these are just a few things that would of concerned me: Does it bite, stab, explode, give off gases, radiate any sort of energy, could it control your brain? Before that thing started turning into a mini transformer and going for a mooch I would of been long gone and phoning home for a ticket back. When little alien called "Calvin" ...... (No I'm not making this up!) Decides to grab scientists arm and act all hostile (Due to Calvin having a nap, to be rudely woken up by being ELECTROCUTED) another of the brain dead astronauts wants to go in and rescue him! Later on Calvin is crawling all over Jap guy and two fellow crew are trying to pull him towards them into their part of the station? WHY? Just so much of this awful logic defying stuff is going on that I just couldn't take anymore. I was just wishing for Calvin to finish off these goons as soon as possible and I had a chuckle to myself every time one bit the dust. I vote 2 because the ending was so satisfying. If these bunch of sad goons represent the pinnacle of human achievement, the whole species can die. I would call this film "Prometheus 2 - squid takes out pathetic humans again"

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demenydavid from United Kingdom
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This could have been a really great and interesting movie, but it is ruined by a string of illogical events.

Spoiler alert ! !

Some of these: - Kevin (the alien) seems to be totally fire resistant. At the beginning, one of the scientist chased it in the isolation room and hit it with a blowtorch multiple times. The alien did not even slow down a bit, but directly attacked back without seemingly having any wound. Knowing that only very few materials can resist heat above a couple of hundred degrees, that seems to be very unreasonable.

- The communication system broke down right at the beginning. No secondary system available in the whole ISS! ! A "radio" cannot cost that much in the age of telecommunication so designers of ISS would not build one or more backups of this essential tool into ISS. And that notion that the communication system would need special coolant ... Does not make sense at all.

- Scientist are mourning a lost crew member for seemingly a long time while having an all resistant and all powerful alien roaming in their tiny space station putting them in immediate mortal danger.

- The "genius" biologist let himself to be sucked dry and endangered the entire crew and the entire Earth, by smuggling the alien on his leg. Just because he thought the alien is not evil and just trying to survive.

- Whatever the crew did worked in favour of the alien. Like if an unseen hand (lame script) wanted to raise tension by always helping the alien. Trying to burn the alien in the tubes, the Soyuz capsule which was meant to push the ISS away from Earth, all pushed the station closer to Earth! Nothing happened benefiting the crew.

- The female scientist sacrificed herself for nothing. It was evident that the alien can jump with quite an accuracy, so it just jumped back from her dead body to the space station as could be easily anticipated even by me.

- The fuel just run out at the wrong time. It seemed that if the fuel would last a bit longer, the alien would suffocate. Surprisingly the entire space station lost all the fuel just before the alien died, so it could enter the space station again.

- Around the end all system failures worked against the humans and for the alien. The 2 escape pods went just the wrong direction. Of course they hit the debris around the space station causing both to take the opposite course the pilots wanted. Kevin (the alien) seemingly learnt on the fly how to navigate a human space capsule safely back to Earth while subduing the scientist in it. He learnt how the control works, what would be the correct entry path, how human system work on the fly. HOW? Moreover the astronaut in the capsule did not anticipate that if the autopilot is let run, than the alien would end up back on Earth. He clicked buttons, took the controls but these were not enough the diver the capsule away from the correct entry course. Could not even go on a burn up or skim off course at least....

There were lot more of these in the movie. Basically the movie had rarely anything logical in it. Even in movie Alien people were not these "unlucky" or movie script so lame. They fought back, they had their moments, the universe (script) did not conspire to destroy them no matter what.

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Denise Baxter from Norway
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*Spoiler alert* So it all starts pretty OK on a space station that is about to receive some earth samples from Mars. We get to meet the crew and some of them are top cast as Ryan Renolds and Jake Gyllenhal. And off course it strikes me that at least one of these are the main character. But that thought passed as soon as Ryan Renolds dies after only 10 minutes in the most stupid way. So the movie starts, I'm awfully confused of who the main characters are, what kind of team they are. Who should I like? Why is Jake Gyllenhal so quiet? Why is the biologist so naive and the questions go on forever. The story line is as thin as the air in space and as simple as a one cell organism. Basically you are watching a indestructible starfish kill one by one in a gory way until everybody is dead. The end is so unoriginal that a 5 year old could make something better.

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saittham71 from Netherlands
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If you want to experience what the world's most stupid space crew would do when they encounter alien life, then this is the movie for you. You will be spoiled with one idiotic decision after the other, making you wonder if the alien life-form also has telepathic powers, using it to dumb down it's prey.

At the start of the movie the crew is besides themselves with joy when they manage to reanimate a single alien cell that has been dead for billions of years. Even when it starts to replicate and grow very fast, none of them feels any sense of possible danger.

After the alien life-form attacks the scientist, there still seems to be no hurry to just shoot the lab into space. After all, it's just mankind's future that is at stake. No, the most important thing is to save the scientist. This crew would have benefited from a sociopath in their midst or a protocol obsessed captain. That would have saved them many times.

To make matters worse, a huge chunk of the dialogue is redundant. You see that the creature has grown, then somebody says "Wow, it has grown". You see the alien make a fast escape, somebody says "Wow, it is fast". You see the alien being smart, you hear someone say "How smart is this thing?". You see the alien look for air holes, you hear someone say "It is looking for air holes" …you get the picture. Who on earth would write a script like that and not notice the stupendous redundancy?

The movie does have some great tense and gory moments that work well. There just is not enough of them to make it work as a good horror movie. The alien itself starts out very realistic, but looks increasingly CGI during the movie and the many close-ups don't help. It looks too surreal to be threatening.

All in all, it was a huge disappointment to me. With a star cast like that, you would expect more than just a very bland space thriller.

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Charlie Oscar from United States
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Alien-esk, but that is not what pisses me off.

Great cinematography. Wonderful concept. Believable sets. Good actors. Horrible execution and completely contrived plot line and plot drivers. I will get to the point..... The creature escapes the lab by escaping into a fire suppression vent!! Assuming it could fit into the 1/2-1/4 inch steel tubing (capable of containing several thousand psi) it would have dead-ended into a steel or carbon fiber cylinder (again capable of containing several thousand psi). The alien would have effectively trapped itself inside a completely sealed system and unable to escape. Movie over, destroy life form at earliest convenient opportunity.

It would have been much more believable and sustained the plot line if the alien could have just escaped out the door when Rory went in to rescue Huge (who causes ALL the problems with his maternal instinct - he calls it "my child" wha WHAT?! - and love for the creature completely at the expense of the lives of his crew mates). Don't even start me on when he hides in his pants - not a party in there either.

I'm done.... there are just too many holes in the construction of the plot for me to even believe that such a creature could exist or enjoy the sinister nature of the creature. Any critic who likes this must have no basic eye for detail such as the solid state of matter and how complex machines such as space craft would be constructed to keep the vacuum of space out side the craft. This space ship is obviously a sieve. this terrible movie disgusts me and I want my money back.

Yuck

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Paynebyname from London, England
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Just got back from seeing this and I have to say that I thought it was a really good film.

I see that RT only has it at 65% and it's being made out to be a cheap Alien clone but I think that is doing it a dis-service. I felt it was intelligently made, set characters and situations well and created a palpable sense of tension. Criticism that it's a blatant re-run of Alien are unjustified. Granted, it's about an alien life form in space but that to me is where the similarity ends.

Alien isn't the only scary film set in space that is allowed to be made and if Prometheus is anything to go by, Ridley has no right to be the only person allowed to make sci-fi horror films. It captured well the excitement of discovery, the wonder of space and the precariousness of facing any problems up there.

The effects were good, you could see what was going on, there was unease and dread and it kept me thoroughly absorbed and entertained. I don't want to elaborate anymore for fear of giving away spoilers but if you like a bit of tension with your sci-fi, it's worth checking out. Try to avoid the critic reviews if you can as I think going in a little blind will help your enjoyment.

space|extraterrestrial life|zero gravity|trapped in space|mars|international space station|space probe|astronaut|space station|tech noir|survival|coughing up blood|choking|drowning|flame thrower|blood|death|space shuttle|escape pod|no survivors|outer space|weightlessness|white mouse|everybody dies|first contact|alien life form|unkillable|unstoppable|man eater|pointless self sacrifice|protocol|alien monster|pet alien|paraplegic|giant amoeba|tragic ending|unhappy ending|mars space probe|loss of friend|female astronaut|spacewalk|alien|death of friend|life on mars|broken finger|explosion|reference to calvin coolidge|quarantine|cdc|leg eaten|apocalyptic|evil wins|cynical ending|zero gravity toilet|barefoot male|singing in a space station|russian accent|title spoken by character|surprise ending|baby delivery|japanese abroad|russian abroad|american abroad|englishman abroad|englishwoman abroad|

AKAs Titles:


Certifications:
Argentina:16 / Australia:MA15+ / Austria:14 / Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Maritimes/Manitoba/Ontario) / Canada:13+ (Quebec) / Germany:16 / Hong Kong:IIB / Indonesia:R / Ireland:15A / Japan:PG12 / Malaysia:P13 / Mexico:B / Netherlands:16 / New Zealand:R13 / Philippines:R-13 / Portugal:M/14 / Russia:16+ / Singapore:NC16 / South Korea:15 / Sweden:15 / Switzerland:16 / Taiwan:R-12 / UK:15 / USA:R (certificate #50578)