Life from ISS to Earth
Life finally got released in China in last week, my wife and I went to see it last Saturday. Even though I warned her it was a horror movie before the it began like a well-informed wise critic, I have to say some scenes still scared the hell of both of us. It’s an intense horror movie, with some innovative designs on the alien itself and the way it attacks humans.
Actually I’ve been looking forward to see this film after I saw the trailers several months ago, and one of them actually is the complete scene of how Calvin grabbing and breaking the hand of Dr. Hugh Derry when he stimulates Calvin with some kind of electric pen, which haunted me for days. And when I was seeing the film in cinema, even I had already known what would happen, my heart still reach in my mouth every time Hugh pets or touches baby Calvin. And I’m sure a firm handshake from other people will remind me of baby Calvin for the rest of my life.
The way how Calvin kills Deadpool is also horrifying and refreshing. After Calvin enter his mouth, Calvin doesn’t choke him to dead as we might expected, nor explodes him like Ridley’s Xenomorph would do, just blood keeps coming out of his month as Deadpool dies, silently and thrilling, until Calvin breaks out.
At the beginning of the film there’s a long take depicting how it looks like inside ISS and how the crew live and work, I smirked when I saw this because I’ve watched Sunita Williams’s ISS inside tour on youtube, and it’s far messier with all kinds of wires, gadget, and white parcels everywhere. I know it’s aesthetically necessary to sugarcoat everything when shooting a movie, but It’s kinda like never show your real bedroom to other people.
After Calvin reenters ISS through the thrusters, the remaining 4 crew members decide to seal themselves into an isolated module and vent other modules to suffocate Calvin back to dormant, turns out Calvin’s been with them all along by attaching on Huge’s leg. Some audiences around me whispered and blamed that Hugh knew and he deliberately took Calvin with him into the module with them. Well, in my opinion it’s a yes and no, it’s yes because Hugh has the most empathy for Calvin among the crew and actually he was murmuring about its survival nature before he goes into unconscious; it’s no because he knows it would be disastrous for the entire crew if he bring it along into the module and as a scientist he just can’t deliberately do it. And it’s yes because he seems to know something and tries to reach his leg before enters cardiac arrest; it’s no because he is indeed paralyzed and he just can’t feel when Calvin latches on his leg even eats his leg. And the smart part is director actually used some film language to imply Calvin is with Huge before and after the crew seal themselves in the ISS module, we just don’t know for sure because we don’t know how, until they rips his pants.
As Calvin grows bigger and bigger, at some stage - I don’t remember when, he grows a concrete head. I’ve always wondered if this is necessary as Calvin is a brand new generation of alien whose whole body is all brain, all muscle, and all eye. Maybe they thought it’s more intimidating when Calvin is face to face with Sho Murakami and David Jordan, but that face, it’s disgusting enough of course, just lack of imagination.
The story of this film is weak, the whole crew just keep making mistakes to make things worse, nonetheless it’s a fine thriller movie, and it definitely leaves me some good memories.