Coming back the very next year, here we
go with the fourth edition of April Showers! Seven days, seven reviews. It makes
me look like a glutton for punishment I know, but a week-and-a-half of atrophy caused a log-jam of reviews, so it's really my own fault. First up, is Life, the
recent sci-fi/horror flick from Daniel Espinoza.
After a group of astronauts aboard the
International Space Station activate the dormant cells found inside a
soil sample brought back from Mars, things go bad very quickly.
Life was yet another project whose
script I happened to read beforehand with my group. I thought it was
one of the best – or least the most cinematic – scripts we'd read
up to that point. After watching it, I can say that the result
was a pretty good representation of what was on the page.
Jake Gyllenhaal in Life. |
I was initially surprised by the
negative backlash the movie received after the first trailer. People
were like, oh it looks like an Alien/Gravity rip-off to which I
thought, but yeah, doesn't that sound like something you would wanna
watch??? It was funny actually because in the script, the alien life
form was described as more of a Blob-like creature, so hells yeah,
I'd see that movie! It turned out the filmmakers actually ended up
giving the alien an actual form, making it ultimately more like Alien
than The Blob, but the creature design was decent, so I was fine with
it.
I have to admit that I was pretty
impressed with the digital effects. I think my main concern when
reading the script was how they were going to pull off some of the
action sequences, but Sony sunk enough money into the production to
make them work. I thought two (the lab and the spacewalk sequences)
in particular were really pulled off well. I was worried that the
lack of the creature in the trailer was too hide its shitty CGI, but
I'm happy to report it was probably one of the best rendered
creatures I've seen in a while. I thought that, at times, it even
showed real personality through its problem solving intellect.
Never, ever, ever a good idea. |
It wasn't all gravy though. I think the
consensus when we read the script was the first two acts were pretty
strong, but things got muddled from there. The ending was fairly
obvious on the page and unfortunately, this transparency wasn't fixed in the final product either. Overall, I thought Life was a
pretty fun ride, despite sharing several beats with the iconic films
that came before it.
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