The Call Is Coming from Inside the Space Station
If you’ve ever wondered what Alien would look like if it were directed by an overachieving biology major with a flair for nihilism and a fondness for Jake Gyllenhaal’s bone structure, congratulations — you’ve found your answer in Life (2017). Directed by Daniel Espinosa and written by Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Life is a slick, high-octane cosmic disaster that proves once and for all that scientists should stop poking things with electric prods, especially things from Mars.
It’s the rare horror movie where the monster isn’t the biggest threat — it’s human optimism. That, and the tragic inability of astronauts to just leave things alone.
Plot: Science Goes to Hell, in Zero-G
The premise is beautifully simple: six scientists aboard the International Space Station discover a single-celled Martian organism, revive it, name it Calvin (because nothing says “extraterrestrial menace” like a name fit for a golden retriever), and promptly regret every decision they’ve ever made.
At first, Calvin is cute — a little translucent starfish blob that could double as a stress toy. But when exobiologist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) accidentally zaps it awake with an electric shock, the creature quickly evolves from “adorable squishy pet” to “unholy space calamity.” Within minutes, it crushes Hugh’s hand, eats a lab rat, and begins auditioning for Facehugger Idol.
From there, Life becomes a claustrophobic ballet of doom. Calvin grows, escapes, and starts picking off the crew like it’s trying to complete a galactic scavenger hunt. Engineer Rory (Ryan Reynolds) goes first, dying in a scene so grotesquely creative it makes Alien look like Sesame Street. Commander Kat (Olga Dihovichnaya) follows, sacrificing herself in the world’s least relaxing spacewalk.
The survivors — David (Jake Gyllenhaal), Miranda (Rebecca Ferguson), Sho (Hiroyuki Sanada), and a progressively less alive Hugh — realize they’re trapped in a floating can of existential dread. Their mission? Keep Calvin from reaching Earth, because if one thing’s clear, it’s that humanity’s survival hinges on making sure no one back home opens the wrong door.
Spoiler: someone opens the wrong door.
The Cast: Smart People Making Dumb Decisions Beautifully
It takes a talented cast to make you care about six people you already know are doomed, and thankfully, Life assembled the best-looking group of victims this side of Gravity.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dr. David Jordan, a man so tired of Earth he literally moved to space to avoid it. He’s melancholy, philosophical, and perpetually floating like a ghost haunting his own movie. “I hate what we do to each other down there,” he murmurs early on, which is ironic since “up here” is about to get a lot worse.
Rebecca Ferguson brings the kind of tightly-wound tension that says, “I’ve read every CDC manual twice, and now I have to improvise against a space jellyfish.” Her Miranda North is all business — until business gets eaten.
Ryan Reynolds, playing the ship’s engineer, delivers his trademark brand of quippy charm before dying horribly. It’s a reminder that even in the depths of space, sarcasm cannot save you. His death is quick, brutal, and uncomfortably wet — the cinematic equivalent of watching a smoothie explode in slow motion.
Hiroyuki Sanada adds quiet dignity as Sho Murakami, the systems engineer and only man who seems remotely competent. Naturally, he too dies. Because competence has no place in horror.
Ariyon Bakare’s Hugh Derry gives Calvin its first meal, his hand its last feeling, and science its latest bad idea. By the time he’s being used as a feeding tube by his own experiment, the irony is almost poetic.
And Olga Dihovichnaya’s commander? She gets one of the most haunting space deaths ever filmed, trapped in her coolant-flooded suit, suffocating while her teammates watch helplessly. It’s Apollo 13 meets Saw, and it’s gorgeous in that bleak, “why did I eat popcorn during this?” kind of way.
Calvin: The Cutest Mass Murderer in the Galaxy
Let’s take a moment to appreciate Calvin — the film’s true star and proof that evolution has no chill.
At first, Calvin resembles a translucent pancake. By mid-film, it’s a shimmering death-angel of tendrils and muscle, a perfect fusion of grace and nightmare. Its movements are mesmerizing — part octopus, part gymnast, part malevolent origami. You could put it in a screensaver and still lose sleep.
But Calvin isn’t evil; it’s just hungry. In fact, it’s arguably the film’s most sympathetic character. The humans keep attacking it, burning it, starving it — and it just wants to live. It’s like Finding Nemo, if Nemo could crush your skull and eat your organs.
By the time it’s crawling through vents, latching onto helmets, and performing space yoga around corpses, Calvin becomes both terrifying and oddly relatable. You too might develop homicidal tendencies if you’d been stuck in a petri dish for millennia and then zapped awake by some guy named Hugh.
Direction and Design: Beauty in the Bleakness
Director Daniel Espinosa transforms Life into a slick, suffocating nightmare. The film’s cinematography, courtesy of Seamus McGarvey, is both intimate and vast — every glimmering curve of the ISS feels like a cathedral for bad decisions. The long, floating camera shots give the illusion of zero gravity while amplifying the sense of claustrophobia.
It’s a film that understands its setting isn’t just background; it’s prison architecture. The International Space Station becomes a character — sterile, cold, and silently complicit in everyone’s doom.
The visual effects, courtesy of DNEG and Industrial Light & Magic, are immaculate. Calvin’s evolution from goo to god-tier organism is rendered with horrifying beauty. You can see the veins, the translucency, the flexing sinew. It’s art — horrifying, slimy art.
And the score by Jon Ekstrand? Pure anxiety. It hums like an airlock about to fail.
Themes: Space Is Hell, and We Are Its Idiots
Life doesn’t reinvent the wheel — it just spins it faster, harder, and into a wall of existential dread. The film is less about aliens and more about the futility of human curiosity.
Every scientific milestone in Life comes with a price tag written in blood. It’s a cosmic morality play: mankind reaches for knowledge, knowledge bites off mankind’s face. There’s something darkly comic about watching the crew meticulously follow safety protocols one minute and then ignore all of them the next.
You can practically hear the movie whisper: “Science is great, but maybe don’t poke the glowing blob.”
That Ending: Humanity’s Final “Oops”
The finale is a masterclass in irony so thick you could butter toast with it. David lures Calvin into his escape pod, planning to pilot it into deep space while Miranda escapes safely to Earth. But debris collides with both pods, and in the ensuing chaos, the roles swap.
When a pod splashes down on Earth, we think Miranda has survived — until Vietnamese fishermen peer inside and find Calvin wrapped around David like a clingy ex. The real escape pod, with Miranda still screaming, drifts helplessly into space.
It’s bleak. It’s beautiful. It’s karma.
And as the fishermen open the pod despite David’s desperate pleas, you can’t help but smirk. Humanity, it seems, never learns.
Final Thoughts: A Sci-Fi Horror That Actually Earns Its Oxygen
Life is what happens when you combine the intelligence of Gravity, the terror of Alien, and the sense of humor of a funeral. It’s smart, stylish, and merciless — a rare film that manages to be both horrifying and hilarious in its pessimism about human nature.
It’s not a popcorn flick; it’s a cautionary tale with teeth. And tentacles. Lots of tentacles.
If you’re the kind of person who roots for the monster — or at least respects its work ethic — you’ll love this movie.
Just remember: in space, no one can hear you say, “Maybe we should’ve left Mars alone.”
Final Rating: ★★★★☆
(Four out of five oxygen canisters — gorgeously grim, scientifically stupid, and proof that life finds a way… to kill you.)
