Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Life 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

A strong upgrade in picture quality over the Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 18, 2017

Art imitates life, and Life imitates movies like Alien. It's not a poor man's recreation of Ridley Scott's genre masterpiece, but it is a derivative facsimile thereof. The movie offers little of creative substance, serving instead as a perfectly serviceable and largely entertaining but fairly hollow nuts-and-bolts tale of a handful of science-types trapped on board a space station with a deadly, evolving alien creature. That's really about it. The film, from Director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), satisfies all technical requirements and delivers a decent enough time-killing watch, but audiences should be prepared for a film that yields little in the way of serious drama, characterization, gore, or genre chills. It has no staying power beyond its time on the screen. Indeed, "serviceable" describes it to a "T."

The crew of the Nostromo, er, the International Space Station, brings aboard a wayward probe that holds precious samples from an expedition to Mars. It's a bumpy, risky coupling, but the crew manages to haul it in intact. What they find will change the world. Exobiologist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) discovers evidence of life, a single-cell organism that quickly multiplies itself into a larger creature. As the rest of the crew -- Ekaterina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya), Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal), Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada), and Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) -- observes, the creature attaches itself to Derry's hand. It quickly becomes clear that the creature does not come in peace and that the crew faces a grave, unstoppable danger, and preventing its travel to Earth suddenly seems more important than saving their own lives.

Make no mistake, Life offers good, basic R-rated Sci-Fi entertainment. Though it doesn't push any boundaries -- not in terms of genre cadence, violence, or characterization -- it maneuvers through the basics with a spit-and-polish sheen that does well enough to mask the film's structural deficiencies, which are many. Chief amongst them is characterization. The handful of ISS astronauts are given rather rudimentary backstories -- one is paralyzed, one is overextending his stay, one is a new father -- but none of it truly matters in the grand scheme of things. They're little more than instruments for the movie's use, characters who are both fodder for the creature and individuals who have the training and wherewithal to use ship's systems to their advantage to battle the creature. But Life usually struggles to get out of a comfort zone of predictability, if not predictability in its own, unique storyline certainly predictability within the greater genre construction. Right down to the final shot there's precious little ingenuity and nothing to keep the audience on its toes. The film is happy to just offer a new coat of paint on a standby genre, which is fine, and it works well enough in that regard.

The movie is technically sound, though, again, not much of a modern marvel. Creature design is neither here nor there. It's not memorable in the least and it's not particularly menacing. It's sort of like an enhanced face-hugger. Various external shots of the station, both beauty shots and in moments of peril, are well done. Espinosa and DP Seamus McGarvey commendably make use of the cramped locations, squeezing out intensive visual drama from just a few spaces for operation in the ISS. It's even difficult to tell what's real and what's been digitally inserted or enhanced. Performances aren't particularly compelling, but then again, neither is the script. The cast often lacks serious emotion, failing to convey deep, sincere fear, for example, even as they verbalize their terror. There's little here to excite in the moment and even less over time.

Life 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

Life's Blu-ray generally looks just fine with a few caveats, but the UHD offers up a fairly sizable improvement and, at times, almost puts its 1080p counterpart to shame. The 2160p/HDR-enhanced image offers a serious uptick in clarity and color to be sure and, at times, detail, even as the movie was reportedly finished at 2K but photographed at higher resolutions. Some of the best moments for comparison come right at the end. Without divulging spoiler material, the movie transitions from a fairly bleak gray and blue-heavy coloring to a much more organic, diverse, and bright location where colors dazzle and, even as the image maintains something of a digital glossy sheen, it offers a substantial boost in clarity and fine detail that's unmissable. For the bulk of the movie, though, there's not a lot of difference in some extreme close-ups; Hugh Derry studies the creature under a microscope about 12-13 minutes into the movie, and both discs reveal plenty of intimate facial texturing. In other places, and as noted in the Blu-ray review, there are some rather flat, softer, pastier, less well-defined moments. Not on the UHD. These textures are much firmer, much more revealing, whether faces, clothes, or instrument panels and other surfaces on board the space station. The HDR color scheme gives the movie a much brighter, more evenly lit feel. It doesn't fundamentally change the mood, but it does open up some scenes and plays nicely in conjunction with the improved textures. Accurate or not, the movie plays, looks, and feels better with the HDR compliment. On the down side, noise can be a touch spiker, but at the same time finer. Blacks don't always hold deep. Still, this is a fairly substantial improvement over the Blu-ray; it's definitely the way to watch the movie at home.

Life 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The short review: take the review for the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack, amplify the superlatives a bit with some overhead goodness, and consider that the review for this disc's Atmos soundtrack. The longer review: the 7.1 track is quite good, and the Atmos doesn't have much room to expand on greatness. Some of the more chaotic moments -- alarms blaring at the 24-minute mark or a big, whooshing action scene with rushes of air and debris and deep and penetrating notes all blending together for the audience's attention and to the movie's extreme-end benefit at the 74-minute mark -- offer good examples of how both tracks deliver potency and vitality. The Atmos is a little tighter, a touch better defined in terms of sending rushing elements through the stage and, indeed, above the listener at the 74-minute-mark frenzy. One might be hard-pressed to notice any substantial differences when alternating between discs on an A-B comparison, but there's no mistaking the slight, but critical, added depth and dimensionality the overhead layer brings to the proceedings. The Atmos track might sound a little fuller in quieter scenes where station's systems or small background elements sound a hair richer, but otherwise the tracks are awfully close to one another. Needless to say, dialogue is just fine here. Both tracks serve the movie well; this one just a smidgen better.

Life 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Life features a hodgepodge of featurettes and a few deleted scenes on the included Blu-ray disc. The UHD disc contains only the standard Sony extras: a few cast and crew still images and a collection of categorized Moments (2160p/HDR/Atmos): Calvin (12:14), David Jordan (12:43), Miranda North (14:19), and The Crew (13:56). A UV digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 5:49 total runtime): Caution of spoilers in one of the following titles: Jordan Examines His Stamp Collection, Adams Mending His Helmet, The Tang Breakfast Scene, Derry in the Gym, Adams' Body Is Placed Inside His Pod, and Sho and Jordan Talk.
• Life: In Zero G (1080p, 6:54): Cast and crew discuss the technical and performance arts challenges of shooting in what has been created to be sets similar to a no-gravity environment.
• Creating Life: The Art and Reality of Calvin (1080p, 7:07): Discussing the creature's biological design and implementation in the film as well as the possibility of life on Mars and elsewhere.
• Claustrophobic Terror: Creating a Thriller in Space (1080p, 7:28): Cast and crew discuss how outer space enhances the story and the film's structure. The piece also includes discussions on themes and concepts in the film, Espinosa's direction, the film's strive to achieve reality, visual structure, sets, and more. It's a solid catch-all piece.
• Astronaut Diaries (1080p, 3:00): The characters share a few brief (visually pixelated and compressed) thoughts.
• Previews (1080p): Additional Sony titles.

Life 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Life may not captivate, but it offers just enough entertainment value to keep the viewer interested. It's as predictable as the day is long and the performances (and the script) are a drag, but the filmmakers have injected the movie with just enough of a technical achievement and sheen to keep it moving, assuming one can get past the overwrought opening act. A classic watch-and-forget, the movie will likely only be remembered when it's seen in a collection of films that tried, but failed, to capture the same magic as Alien. Sony's UHD release of Life actually breathes a little more life into the movie. The uptick in video quality ranges from solid to substantial, and the movie plays better with a firmer, more stable image. The Blu-ray is by no means bad, but it sure doesn't look great in comparison. The upgrade in audio is more of a wash, a lateral move with only a slight upward movement in favor of the Atmos. Supplements are unchanged beyond the moments and still photos. Recommended.