Life

It’s better not to know – either who’s out there, or the plot of this movie – so I’m going to write around it as much as possible. Rumors had this thing being everything from the origin of Spider-Man’s symbiote black suit to the origin story for Justice League’s villain, Starro the Conqueror! The truth is it’s something a bit older. Intercepted by the International Space Station, a Martian probe containing soil samples turns the recovery mission into a game of survival when a single-cell organism is stimulated to life out of hibernation. This first encounter, nicknamed Calvin, is both sentient and equipped for survival. It’s yet another retelling of the 1939 A.E. van Vogt short story “Black Destroyer,” which along with three other stories formed the basis for The Voyage of the Space Beagle which van Vogt successfully proved in court was the seed for the movie Alien, about a stowaway tentacled life-form that hunted populations to extinction, using expeditions to traverse the galaxy. There is also more than a passing debt paid to the 1958 black & white movie It! The Terror From Beyond Space, where while on a mission to Mars, a large, external exhaust provides an alien creature easy access inside the ship where it begins picking off its crew. Every conceivable weapon is used but the creature can only be stopped by suffocation! So with today’s advanced effects, Calvin may look part-animal, vegetable or mineral at its various stages but it’s deep-rooted in science fiction’s pulp past. Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds and Rebecca Ferguson head the cast in what is more of the familiar “let’s fight ’em up here before they get down there” sci-fi horror. But, it’s really well made sci-fi horror.

[R]