MovieChat Forums > Life (2017) Discussion > Best sci-if horror since Sunshine

Best sci-if horror since Sunshine


It stole a few elements - the in media res opening, lean storytelling that strips away needless fluff like backstory and forced romance, Hiroyuki Sanada, and of course the entire setting and genre.

Sunshine itself was a blend of Alien, Event Horizon and 2001.

Life managed to distinguish itself within the genre, however, with a very credible creature and some interesting questions about… life. Whereas Sunshine had a bitter-sweet ending, Life’s ending was pure bitter!

A brilliant little claustrophobic genre film with fantastic performances. I hope it gets the praise it deserves with time.

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The difference between the two is that Sunshine's ending followed through with a logical conclusion, whereas Life's ending had a rather contrived ending.

It's why Sunshine I regard highly with a lot of critical praise, even in spite of its flaws. Life? I think frequently about the film but nowhere near as fondly. The contrivances detract from the overall enjoyment, and when faced with having to view them again, I simply prefer not to.

I think a bitter but less contrived ending would have made for the better and more grounded ending.

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The ending was the best bit! What would you have preferred to see happen?

What were the ‘contrivances’ in the film?

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Oh don't get me wrong, the actual end scene where Calvin (was it?) has spread throughout the shuttle and is completely overtaking Jake is grotesque, fascinating, and frightening all at the same time. You really want to see what happens next.

However, how we got there is what's contrived. We have the dual screens of Jake and the other lady in their pods, where you're pretty sure her pod is the one going out of control (and it is) just to add unneeded suspense to an already suspenseful situation.

Preceding that, though, the other problem was pretty much everything after I think Calvin (or was it Kevin?) consumed the black guy's leg, when they had isolated him in one of the sections of the ship, they could have easily boarded the pods and left and basically declared the stationed condemned, hazardous, and then nuked it from orbit. But then there was the scene where Sanada's character gets merc'd by Calvin after it attacks the guys in the rescue pod. I just remember how the movie kept creating more nodes in the pathway to its resolution in order to build new forms of suspense and crisis for the characters, even when it was unnecessary or didn't make a whole lot of sense, like in Sanada's case where he kind of got off'd for no other reason than so that they could do the dual-escape pod scene with the two remaining characters.

It's interesting when compared to films like Apollo 13, or The Martian, Alien, Aliens, (heck even Alien 3), Predator, or 2001: A Space Odyssey where the crisis is addressed and resolved in a reasonable enough matter that makes sense, doesn't insult the audience's intelligence nor goes through the route of contriving new ways to maintain the suspense (though I suppose an argument could be made that Sunshine does this with the Pinbreaker character (or whatever his name was), but for the most part the odds were always stacked against them in Sunshine and a lot of the problems they faced seemed like common problems you would encounter on a journey like that).

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I don't think I've seen Sunshine...I see it was directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. I'll probably check it out, thanks for the heads up.

As for Life, I really like it. Derivative of Alien but still a good film.

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It’s a modern masterpiece, and Danny Boyle’s best film.

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this movie was dumb on every level.

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‘Dumb’ how?

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