LIFE: Shortsighted Characters Alienate The Viewer From A Gripping Story

In this interview with Yahoo Movies, two Rogue One editors describe a pre-production process involving the creation of a “story reel.” Essentially, once the story breakdown is set, editors splice together scenes (taken from from hundreds of different movies) resembling scenes that will eventually be in their movie. This gives the director a pretty good general idea of how long each scene is going to take and what pacing adjustments need to be made.

I imagine almost the entire story reel for Life could have been comprised solely of scenes from Alien and Gravity. I’m far from the first to express that sentiment, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that when a movie so closely aligns itself to other well-known films, it’s begging to be compared to them. And Life picked a hell of a curve to be graded against.

What does Life do right?

It certainly picked the right genre, for starters. It’s pretty hard to make a boring evil alien movie; these films don’t necessarily need especially developed characters or an outstanding script to be captivating and thrilling. This one’s no different – any genre fan will be on the edge of their seats for the majority of the movie, and several scenes are legitimately terrifying and riveting at the same time.

The plot does run into some typical obstacles later on; however, the events in the first act are exceptionally effective in instilling fear in both the audience and the astronauts. The increasingly brutal annihilations of Hugh’s (Ariyon Bakare) hand, Stuart Little, and Rory (Ryan Reynolds) are thoroughly unsettling, and for better or for worse, they’re the most memorable parts of the movie. Knowing what Calvin is capable of is also more than enough to ratchet up the tension during each and every drawn-out chase scene.

After the initial (very justified) freak-out, the crew is more or less unified in their plans against Calvin. They don’t necessarily make great decisions (more on this later), but at least they don’t spend much precious screen time arguing with each other. Too many similar movies get bogged down in unnecessary drama between their main characters, which wreaks havoc on the movie’s pacing and distracts the audience from the real dangers. It’s one of the only genre tropes that Life stays away from, but it’s worth recognizing in any case.

Director Daniel Espinosa did a fantastic job of creating a disorienting, suffocating environment on the ISS. The fact that Calvin and the crew (great band name) are in such close quarters cranks up the edge-of-your-seat factor to 11 for almost the entire movie. It’s unfortunate that the writers fell back on Calvin swallowing a tracker, seeing as the setting had so effectively drawn tension from the possibility that Calvin could be absolutely anywhere, around any corner, at any time.

Finally, Calvin’s visual evolution from friendly Q-tip to benign octopus to demonic murder machine is one of the highlights of the movie. Every time we see him, he’s a little bigger and a little more evil-looking, slowly becoming a perfect physical manifestation of the vicious killer we see in the initial breach of the biology lab. Given the plethora of well-known monster movies, it’s not easy to be visually unique in this area, but the imaginations behind Life knocked it out of the park here.

What does Life do wrong?

This section really could be titled “What do the main characters do wrong?”

It’s usually hard to point to one specific thing that separates good scripts from bad scripts, but in the human-versus-monster genre it’s pretty clear: smart characters usually make for more substantial, mentally engaging movies while ill-advised characters make for more predictable, shallow ones. And Life’s protagonists do themselves no favors here.

Dull characters are especially damning in this case, seeing as astronauts are supposed to be some of the smartest, most capable people in the world. However, Life expects us to believe that years of disaster training flies out of the window in high-pressure situations. I want to say that the majority of the characters’ decisions would have been major protocol deviations, but given the version of NASA that Life portrayed I’m not so sure there was a protocol.

Why is there a portable flamethrower on the ISS? Why concern yourself so much with firewalls if you put so little effort into maintaining them? Why would anyone send a manned battering ram to push the ISS away from earth? Why would the people on that battering ram try to board the station without knowing what’s going on? How can it be so easy to accidentally put the ISS on a collision course with earth? Why didn’t escape pods occur to anyone much, much earlier in the movie?

But I digress. The point is, most of the plot was driven by bad choices and impossibly negligent protocols. Everyone involved (mostly NASA, but the astronauts as well) should have been far more prepared for a worst-case scenario. Like I said, lots of thrillers and horror movies have similar problems, but it’s unfortunate that Life missed the opportunity to set itself apart here. Intelligent, capable characters could have made the movie far more cerebral – and therefore more meaningful and memorable – without sacrificing any suspense or captivating apprehension.

Instead, dumb characters and flimsy firewalls pave the way for Calvin to enjoy an unrivaled run of domination once he escapes the biology lab. It never felt like the astronauts were anywhere near an even match for him. Like I said earlier, his ferociously savage attacks are enough to maintain plenty of tension throughout the movie, so this imbalance isn’t a fatal flaw; it’s just another product of weak, unintelligent characters.

Conclusion

I spent more time criticizing this movie than applauding its strengths, which isn’t really fair. For all my complaints, Life certainly nails its big moments, which buys it some substantial leeway to cover for its weaker areas. It’s visually imaginative and steadily riveting, making it worth your two hours, especially if you’re a fan of the genre. It’s just frustrating that what could have been a more memorable classic handicapped itself with unintelligent, hapless characters.

That’s enough from me – what did you think of Life? Did its best moments make up for its weaknesses? Why did a trained biologist encourage the growth of an unknown creature without knowing how to kill it? Let us know in the comments!

Life opened in the US on March 18, 2017, and in the UK on March 24, 2017. For a list of all release dates, see here.