Vie

I enjoyed this movie. It has some great jumpy moments at the beginning to pull you into this movie's orbital trajectory.

But to enjoy this movie you do have to suspend your essential disbelief that America and a consortium of other product placement regions, sorry I mean Russia, China and Japan, could spend "well over $200bn" putting a science station in orbit and then man it (or should that be "woman it") with half of a dozen of their most stupid scientists (convincingly played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds and Rebecca Ferguson). ;-)

If you can do that, you'll love it and even find some of it funny.

And if you've never seen Alien (1979) or Gravity (2013) before you might even find the plot line highly original too. ;-)

"Life" is one of those type of movies that snuck under my radar. I hadn't even heard about it prior to it being released. And I got the chance to watch it by sheer luck. So of course I did so, because I do love watching movies. And with the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds on the cast list, what's not to like?

First of all, I must state that the story presented in "Life" was actually surprisingly good and interesting. It is the type of movie that creeps under your skin and sticks with you, leaving you wanting to see more.

A Sci-Fi movie is bound to have great CGI, especially if it is a movie that is reliant on proper effects, which was the case of "Life". So luckily they had a great budget for the CGI and special effects, and it bore fruit. The CGI was amazing in the movie and it all looked so life-like and realistic, all which definitely contributed to the overall enjoyment and outcome of the movie. Which leads me on to the creature design. Wow. Just wow! I don't know how to explain or detail this, because it is something that has to be seen and experienced with your own two eyes.

"Life" is a very intense movie experience.

Of course they had a rather impressive cast ensemble to perform in the movie. With the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, you know it is going to be good.

This is the type of Sci-Fi movie that combines horror in a nice way, and it is definitely a movie that is well worth investing time and money in, if you haven't already seen it.

I was highly annoyed by the unprofessional and error-prone behaviour of the movie characters. Throughout the movie, you will ask yourself: How can he be so stupid? Why is she not doing the obvious? Why are the astronauts emphasising proper procedures, then five seconds later breaking their own rules? How come a former soldier is breaking the chain of command? There is nothing realistic about the behaviour of these characters. In the end, I just hated them. I do not believe that there is a demographic that likes movies like this. Either the script was written by an incompetent author, or the directors are ignorant of what makes a good movie.

Life was a solid horror/alien movie with a wonderful cast and well shot visuals. It is not a masterpiece especially considering the genre's many great entries, including the alien which seemed to be something that this film has modelled after.

I liked how this film in contrast to Alien seemed very plausible and realistic, focusing on the 'science' part of sci-fi. The mission in search of extra terrestrial living organisms is a very interesting topic and this film made the possibilities of this seem so much more plausible. At the same time Life also brings up an interesting idea of how little we know about the universe that we live in and how inexperienced we are. How alien life form could be so different to our expectations and hence the debate of whether we should explore and the consequences of human curiosity.

It carried a good amount of intensity and suspense and was gory and terrifying at times.The performances were quite good, the cast is pretty great though so there was no surprise there but it did fall flat in writing though, not that it was poor but it's a very straight forwards and rather clichéd trope that we've seen many times even though it was indeed well done.

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.