Amazon Prime Video has recently released Life, an intense 2017 sci-fi thriller featuring Hollywood stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds.
The actors are set in the near future playing members of a small crew boarding the International Space Station (ISS), who are in space studying soil samples from planet Mars which they extract from a cell proving that there is the existence of extraterrestrial life. Fascinated by the newly discovered organism, which they name “Calvin”, they believe it could be a great contribution to humanity, but it isn’t long until the cell grows and progressively becomes hostile. “Calvin” growing rapidly violently turns against the ISS crew as the group realises that “Calvin” actually poses a massive threat to all life on earth.
Co-starring Ariyon Bakare, Hiroyuki Sanada and Olga Dihovichnaya as the other members of the astronaut team and penned by the screenwriters behind Deadpool, Joe.co.uk recently praised Life for its terrific performances, its taut and tactile action horror set-pieces and its thematic depth of its screenplay.
In it’s review of the film, Joe.co.uk says: “After all, [Life] centres around these scientists probing this alien organism in the hopes of learning more about life itself.
“As Derry (Bakare’s character) explains early on: ‘Risks are taken for reasons. Because of Calvin, we’re going to learn so much about life. Its origin, its nature, maybe even its meaning.’
“And the crew of the ISS do learn about life – that life is full of death and that often for one species to thrive, another must be destroyed.
“In a moment of clarity, Derry later states about the alien life stalking him and his friends: ‘It’s just surviving. Life’s very existence requires destruction. Calvin doesn’t hate us. But he has to kill us in order to survive.’
“And to Rhett and Wernick’s credit, they follow this idea through to its logical, bitter end – delivering a brilliant gut-punch of an ending.”
Life also has a respectable 68% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with one person writing: “I’m sure some of its logic could be picked apart if you’re into that kind of thing, but I enjoyed it as a taut, white-knuckle space thriller that looks great and absolutely nails it’s ending. That’s enough for me.”
Another said: “Though it’s prepared to rush through some of them in order to keep the pace up, there are big, smart ideas at play.”