Set on board the ISS crewed with an international team, some time in the unspecified near future, a Martian soil sample, brought back by the Pilgrim 7 probe, yields a dormant life-form. The ISS boffins bring it back to life, only to wish they hadn’t.
Life is very clearly and obviously heavily indebted to the Aliens series. But it doesn’t have the same high drama of the ‘original’. Nor do the characters have the charisma of the older films’ cast.
But that said, there’s enough that’s original here, and it’s all somewhat more ‘realistic’ – the super-evil-kelp-demon-alien aside – in terms of the basics of life aboard the ISS (as opposed to the whole Alien Nostromo trip), and how things might go wrong, making it fairly watchable.
My wife is the one that usually suggests we try a sci-fi movie, and so it was on this occasion. I’m the sci-fi sceptic, who finds the whole genre big on promise but small on delivery. With a few exceptions. Life is okay, neither great, nor awful.
As with all the Aliens movies, and many a horror film (or classic western, for that matter), this is essentially a siege, with malevolent evil vs plucky humanity. Perhaps the best and the worst thing about this film is the final twist.