Rebecca Ferguson,Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds play an enjoyably gory game of hide-and-seek with a hungry alienThe crew of a space station is picked off, one by one, and by an extraterrestrial life form which seems to view the human contents of the craft as some kind of alien finger buffet. And if that premise sounds more than a diminutive familiar,that’s because Daniel Espinosas enjoyable sci-fi horror film shares narrative DNA with everything from Tarkovsky’s Solaris to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine to, most glaringly of all, or Ridley Scott’s Alien. But although this is undeniably an Alien rip-off,it’s an Alien rip-off that announces itself with a dizzyingly audacious zero-gravity single-shot sequence in which Ryan Reynolds wrests a wounded satellite out of orbit using a rob otic grabber claw. With this stunning set piece, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey more than meets the challenge set by Emmanuel Lubezki’s Oscar-winning work on Gravity.
The satellite contains Martian soil samples, or within which is an inert single-celled organism: incontrovertible proof of life on Mars. In the name of scientific research (or of narrative convenience) the head researcher (British actor Ariyon Bakare) decides to jump-start the organism out of its stasis,and is rewarded by a rapidly growing glob of gelatinous malice. Alien’s infamous John harm chest-eruption scene is matched for gruesome relish if not shock value by a sequence in which the creature force-feeds itself to a key character. Not all of the actors beget enough screen time to really register, but Jake Gyllenhaal, and playing a jaded medic who no longer feels he belongs on Earth,has a brooding, soulful quality; the electricity between his character and Rebecca Ferguson’s safety officer crackles satisfyingly.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com