#Daniel Espinosa is absolute shit

[sherokutakari]

As much as I hate the new lieutenant and how he treats Dan a la thinly veiled racism, he's not wrong in pointing out Dan IS a corrupt cop who DID get off easy

[sfdfmoviereviews]

Life (2017)

Director Daniel Espinosa gives us a near future international space station on the cusp of the arrival of a Mars sample return mission bearing a suspected example of life from the planet. As the life form rapidly grows and evolves, the crew of the space station find themselves in a desperate struggle to keep it from killing them and returning to Earth. SPOILERS HO.

Life is a film that very much punches above it’s weight. The alien monster thriller genre is pretty hit-and-miss- for every Alien there’s a The Astronaut’s Wife- but in this case Espinosa has crafted a masterfully tense narrative. Walking the middle ground between conventional monster horror and harder but less effective fare such as The Europa Report, Life manages to engage and haunt without any resort to jump scares or torture porn. This is tension strung out to the nth degree from a solid premise.

Despite a tedious and tired device of exposition (’”Let’s show the astronauts being interviewed, that way they can just explain stuff!”) the film establishes all of the characters as smart and likeable, and- crucially- conveys the sheer wonder of discovering alien life before turning it to shit and killing people. It is this effort that makes the later set pieces resonate as well as they do.

Life is aiming for the harder end off the Mohs scale of science fictional hardness, but there are few implausibilities for the nerd in you to nitpick if you so desire. More importantly, it manages the suspension of disbelief well enough that it doesn’t matter at all; Life is smarter than the average space blockbuster but you’re clearly not here for physics.

Performances are uniformly strong, but the absolute standout is Rebecca Ferguson, who as quarantine doctor Miranda North manages to clinch a character who would be deemed heartless or spineless in lesser hands. Jake Gyllenhaal continues his foray into character acting, and it’s good to see him play medic astronaut David Jordan so subtly, despite a backstory he could milk for screen time. Most everyone else is playing a straight horror character, but they do so well.

Life is a surprisingly great space thriller and you should see it.

Tim