Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebeca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

Sony, out now

Sony’s big budget, A-list-starring, sci-if horror certainly delivers on the thrills and visuals, but if only there had been a little more than ambition that just wanting to be a ‘monster on the loose’ Alien knock-off.

You can’t help but feel all the combined frustration of those screenwriters who submit original pitches to studios, only to have them turned down in favour of re-hashes of previously successful ideas. Life is one such beast – essentially a cocktail of Prometheus, Alien, The Thing and Gravity, blended to a single concoction and then ably presented as a new movie. If this was one of those ultra-cheap post-Alien knockoffs like Roger Corman’s Galaxy of Terror or Xtro, you could appreciate why a smaller outfit was jumping on the bandwagon to get a piece of the action, but Life is a movie with money to burn (or vent into space) and that’s what makes it even curioser. To get a spend like this you’d need to jump through loads of hoops and impress hordes of execs, and yet no-one applied the brakes and challenged why such a blatant, expensive carbon copy of Alien needed to be made. Deadpool and Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick did a better job on those movies, both of which are having sequels made – one wonders if this will garner enough box office takings to generate a follow-up.

The ISS Space Station has unwisely secured some soil samples from Mars and it’s not long before the half-dozen astronauts are extracting cellular life, prodding it and encouraging it to grow. A few zaps from an electric probe later and the pseudopod translucent starfish has revealed its powers and starts to stalk the crew members, dispatching them one by one… as happens in this genre. The starry cast boasts Jake Gyllenhaal (taking it all very seriously), Rebecca Ferguson (earnest, but no Ripley) and Ryan Reynolds (initially a wise-cracking Deadpool of a joker until things go south), and because there’s only six of them it doesn’t take long for them to be whittled down to a more manageable duo. The visuals are great and hold up well in a post-Gravity world, with the weightless effects being particularly convincing.

If I’m going to watch such a familiar tale, it helps that it’s done with conviction, and there’s no low-rent artifice to pull you out of the tension, which ramps up constantly, thanks to some taut direction from Daniel Espinosa and an ominous, groaning soundtrack from Jon Ekstrand. If you can forget that you’ve seen this movie so many times before, in everything from Deep Water Six and Leviathan to Event Horizon and The Relic, there’s an awful lot to enjoy. It’s ‘Unstoppable Monster Within Confined Space 101’ and follows a fine tradition – but maybe it was the chasing of the face hugger-like beast with a flame thrower or trying to eject the beast out of the airlock that were déjà vu steps too far. I actually groaned when a character had their shirt ripped open and their chest pummelled with defibrillator paddles, as flashbacks of The Thing were triggered.

The creature, Calvin (he’s named by school kids), is a fully-CGI multi-tentacled beast, growing at an alarming rate as he snacks on and assimilates the nutrients from a lab rat and crew members. His appendages lash out, grabbing limbs and smashing visors. His strength is revealed at an early point when crushing a scientist’s hand to a pulpy mass through a glove. This ET (extra-tentacled) monster is clearly too great a threat to be allowed to reach Earth, and plans are made to contain it either on the space station or by speeding it into the depths of space. But Calvin is a smart little critter, adapting quickly due to his unique cellular make-up, and isn’t giving in without a fight.

Verdict: Engaging, fun, schlocky nonsense that does  exactly what it sets out to do, while lacking a single original thought. What a shame that Alien Covenant is nipping at its heels, and will (hopefully) be reminding cinemagoers what the granddaddy of Xenomorphs can do. 7/10

Nick Joy