So much average

Purely Joyful Movie!

It is a performances centric movie

A different way of telling a story

When the zombie appears and takes a drill and drills into the guy's stomach, it's just comical. It's supposed to be sci-fi horror, but it's much more like "Scary Movie", except that it takes itself seriously. If you had a lot to drink and then watched this film, it might be hilariously bad.

A good science fiction is the best thing in the world, but if it's done poorly it is a pain in the butt. And this one has so many unexplainable aspects, it's hard to watch. They seem to know exactly what happen, even if this is the first time they've met with an alien life form. Why would anyone send the team, risking more lives to search for a dead body? They tell the base station that they find and alien life form and what the HQ does? Yeah, nothing. How can someone with severe claustrophobia be an astronaut? Probably they never tested that during training, really realistic. It seems they have 1 first aid kit for the whole mission so if they didn't carry it to the rover, there's no way they can deal with a simple cut. Oh, and the girl can't walk unless they but a bandage to her really small cut. The girl's space suite was cut with a knife, but if she doesn't pull the knife out, the oxygen can not go out of the suite, yeah right. And it goes on and on and on and on. It could be a small budget film, still they should be able to find someone with a sense of logic. I give it a 5 because I live space mission movies, but it was bad

So a group of astronauts are exploring Mars and just before they are about to leave, a disaster strikes. Sound familiar? Yeah, watching the first act of this film is eerily similar to The Martian, especially considering that this film came out a few years before that Ridley Scott masterpiece. Don't worry though, the second and thirds acts take a whole different direction and the initial setup is generic enough that there bound to be a few films similar with one another.So, what about those two acts that follow? I liked them. The idea is once again perhaps a bit generic, but it's done well and you don't usually see these types of tropes in space. Or, at least I haven't seen them. The horror is effective and the claustrophobic essence of space is utilized well to the film's advantage, as is the harshness of Martian landscape.The biggest thing holding this film back for me is the fact that the actors are not really all that top notch. This could have been a much better film with a few A-list names to really sell the horror, the loneliness and the growing despair of having literally no way out. Now we have Liev Schreiber, who's at least memorable, which is more than can be said about the rest of the cast.Still, that simply means that it's an average experience, instead of a great one. If space horror tickles your fancy, I'd give this one a watch.

A rather more recent entry among the suite of films dealing with Mars exploration, "Last Days on Mars" is a film in which the latter half bears some resemblance to (albeit outperforms) "Red Planet"; while the first section deals more with practical mission problems in a manner somewhat reminiscent of "The Martian". To be honest, it is the first (pre-zombie) part that is most compelling, and all the more so for a British viewer (of this British-Irish film), given the joyously (overly-) optimistic scenario of an international mission that features several British astronauts (played by the likes of Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, Johnny Harris and Tom Cullen); even if the starring role goes to American Liev Schreiber - who plays well as usual; while the mission is headed by a Canadian (also in real life, played by a capable Elias Koteas). Like all of the films referred to (plus, for example, "Mission to Mars"), the locations and style of presentation are good enough to remind us what a beautiful place Mars must be (and indeed is), but also what an immensely hostile, distant and lonely one. The claustrophobia here is at times quite tangible, the rover vehicles look convincing enough, and overall there is no particular sign that this piece of work is the worse for having had only 7 million pounds in its kitty. For better or worse, the makers go mainly with an "infectious life discovered on Mars" story that they stick to in dedicated fashion and carry out to the best of their ability. It works well enough, and rises to its greatest heights when (most of) our astronauts behave heroically like their real-life counterparts, and with a mix of resourcefulness, professionalism, selflessness and sang froid, notwithstanding the (also realistic and also quite tangible) mission fatigue and even "space sickness" (of the more conventional kind).