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Life

5/10

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada

Director: Daniel Espinosa

60 years ago, American astronauts led by Marshall Thompson were decimated by an extraterrestrial that had stowed away on the spaceship in glorious black-and-white in It! The Terror from Beyond Space, a science fiction concept revamped and delivered in glorious colour by director Ridley Scott when something nasty from space burst out of John Hurt’s chest in Alien.

And if there’s one thing that movies have taught us it’s that if at first you succeed, rustle up a revamp.

The plot is straightforward and simple – six members (two women, four men) of the crew of the International Space Station unknowingly seal their fates when they collaborate in retrieving a capsule containing an organism responsible for the destruction of life on Mars and which now rapidly evolves into something suitably horrible that sets about deleting the luckless space scientists as well…

Special effects are special – the actors fly through the air with the greatest of ease and very convincingly as well and they all do what they have to do in the way of acting as well as can be expected given the predictability of much of the narrative.

Alan Frank

USA 2017. UK Distributor: Sony (Columbia). Colour.
99 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 29 Jul 2017

DVD review