I warn you now this will contain spoilers, a lot about what is wrong with this movie cannot be discussed without them

I went into Life with sort of high expectations. I always try to reel in my hype before consuming any media otherwise it has no way of actually reaching my expectations. That being said I was still pretty excited to see this flick. I love sci-fi and horror, it seemed well cast, the idea behind it was solid, there was a lot to look forward to.

The movie kicks off slowly but rather nicely. It introduces the general idea behind the mission, shows how people handle hiccups, shows how involved the whole world is with the project. A good intro. From there it just devolves into a mess of predictability and plot holes.

The basic idea is that they are taking samples from Mars, testing them in space (for safety measures), and find proof of life. Life which by the way ends up being over powered on a space ship that seems to have no actual safety measures. So when the life form that is (to quote) all brain, all muscle, all whatever it needs to be, is shown to be aggressive things fall apart fast. The movie attempts to give you the super intense Alien feeling. Super powered space creature, helpless humans, a rush to solve the problem. You do get all that but with no real excitement, no suspense, and no surprises.

Oh this character that is constantly looking at his leg has the thing on his leg? No way, never saw that coming. Oh this character that suddenly lost the ability to communicate with others is going to mess up a plan because he can’t communicate with the others? What an unexpected plot twist.

Despite that, I am not one to hate a movie for being predictable alone. A movie can still be entertaining even if you can see the whole plot coming, but add in the just ridiculous plot holes and it gets to be too much. The lab designed to keep in anything dangerous they pick up is completely easy to break out of for instance. Even though one character repeats over and over how the thing must never reach Earth and there seem to be zero fail safes to ensure that it doesn’t. The humans just sit there and basically die without making any real attempts to fight back. It’s not just that the creature is way over powered (which it is) it’s also that the humans in this movie are so inept I am struggling to understand how anyone thought this mission would be a success.

I really wanted to like this movie, and I kept trying to shut down my brain and enjoy it. The movie is just so filled with problems that it became impossible. About half way through I got bored, and by the end I was just thinking “fast forward to exactly what I know will happen so I can leave already”. I kept telling myself that I must have missed some amazing symbolism or something because I just don’t understand how the movie was as bad as it was.

If you feel the need to watch a horror movie do yourself a favor and see something else. Or skip the theater and re-watch Alien. The movie has a few moments that might make it worth a rental, but it certainly was not worth the price of admission.