Life is a 2017 American science fiction horror film directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds. The film follows a six-member crew of the International Space Station that uncovers the first evidence of life on Mars.
In the near future, the unmanned Pilgrim 7 space probe returns from Mars to Earth orbit with soil samples potentially containing evidence of extraterrestrial life. The probe is intercepted by the International Space Station, whose six-member crew retrieves its samples. Exobiologist Hugh Derry revives a dormant cell from the sample, which quickly grows into a multi-celled organism that American school children name "Calvin." Derry realises that Calvin's cells can change their specialisation, acting as muscle, neuron, and photosensory cells all at once.
When Derry conducts further research on Calvin, it crushes his hand and knocks him unconscious. Calvin escapes its enclosure and it devours a lab rat, growing in size. Engineer Rory Adams rescues Derry, but is quarantined in the lab when Calvin attacks him. Adams tries to fight off Calvin, but is devoured; Calvin escapes through a fire-control vent. Soon after, the station's communication system overheats, cutting off all contact with Earth. ISS commander Ekaterina Golovkina performs a space walk to find and fix the problem, which turns out to be Calvin. Calvin attacks her and ruptures her spacesuit's coolant system. As her suit fills with coolant, Golovkina blindly makes her way to the airlock. She and the crew realise that Calvin will re-enter the station if they let her in, so she chooses to stay outside and drowns in her spacesuit.
Calvin attempts to re-enter the station through its maneuvering thrusters. The crew fire the thrusters to blast it away, but they drain so much fuel that it causes the ISS to enter a decaying orbit, where it will burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Pilot Sho Murakami suggests using the ISS's remaining fuel to get back into a safe orbit even though it will allow Calvin to re-enter. The crew seal themselves in one side of the station and prepare to vent the atmosphere from the other side to render Calvin dormant. Derry suddenly dies and the crew finds Calvin feeding on his leg and are attacked. Murakami seals himself inside a sleeping pod, while Calvin tries to break inside. Physician David Jordan and Quarantine Officer Miranda North use Derry's corpse as bait to lure Calvin away and trap it in the other side. They discover a Soyuz spacecraft is on its way to intercept an earlier distress call from the ISS. As the Soyuz pushes the ISS out of Earth's orbit, Murakami tries to board the craft, which results in the Soyuz crashing into the ISS, killing him and the Soyuz crew and causing the ISS's orbit to decay again.
The remaining survivors, Jordan and North, speculate that Calvin could survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, so they plan to lure Calvin into one of the ISS' two escape pods. Once inside, Jordan will manually pilot Calvin's pod into deep space, isolating it and allowing North to return to Earth in the other pod. Their plan works apparently. However, North's pod is eventually hit by debris, while Jordan is attacked by Calvin. As North's pod flies in one direction, she records a black box message to warn Earth of Calvin's threat. Eventually, one of these two pods lands on the sea and is found by Vietnamese fishermen, while the other pod was knocked away from Earth. What the Vietnamese fishermen find turns out to be Jordan's pod—not North's. The Vietnamese fishermen then open Jordan's pod despite his warnings, as other boats are shown arriving at the scene, and North's pod is shown flying uncontrollably into deep space while she screams.
Casting
- Jake Gyllenhaal as Dr. David Jordan, USA, ISS medical officer.
- Rebecca Ferguson as Dr. Miranda North, UK, CDC quarantine officer.
- Ryan Reynolds as Rory Adams, USA, ISS engineer.
- Hiroyuki Sanada as Sho Murakami, Japan, ISS systems engineer.
- Ariyon Bakare as Dr. Hugh Derry, UK, ISS exobiologist.
- Olga Dihovichnaya as Ekaterina Golovkina, Russia, ISS Mission Commander.
On November 18, 2015, Deadline Hollywood reported that Daniel Espinosa would direct a film set in space and titled Life, from a script from Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, which Skydance Media financing and producing, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Bonnie Curtis, and Julie Lynn. Paramount Pictures was circling to handle the distribution rights to the film, though the deal was not confirmed. On January 28, 2016, Rebecca Ferguson came on board to star in the film, and Ryan Reynolds subsequently joined, on February 16, 2016. On March 10, 2016, Jake Gyllenhaal was cast in the film. On March 15, 2016, Sony Pictures signed on to handle the worldwide distribution rights and co-finance the film, with Skydance. On June 23, 2016, Hiroyuki Sanada was cast to play one of the members of the International Space Station crew, and on July 19, 2016, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Olga Dihovichnaya and Ariyon Bakare were also cast in the film, playing other crew members. One scene in the trailer for the film features a recycled shot from the 2007 film, Spider-Man 3.
Principal photography on the film began at London's Shepperton Studios on July 19, 2016. To emulate the lack of gravity, the actors were suspended by wires that wound up erased in post-production. Most of the visual effects were handled by Double Negative, aside from the eight-minute long take that opens the movie, done by Industrial Light & Magic using the ISS model sculpted by Double Negative. That scene was described by Daniel Espinosa as "the inverse version of Gravity. Gravity looks at the vastness of space through the oner. I wanted to look at the claustrophobia." Espinosa said that Life was "shot to make a science fiction movie that ties into this other great American genre, which is noir", with the death of the most charismatic character that seems to be the protagonist — using Psycho as an example, Espinosa explained that "Ryan Reynolds became my Janet Leigh" — and a downer ending.
Composer Jon Ekstrand wrote his sixth score while working with Espinosa. Ekstrand aimed to create an "atonal-horror score with some melodic elements", mostly focused on orchestral music while opening with "more melodic and classical cinematic" tones to not give away the horror trappings early on. Espinosa specifically told Ekstrand to seek a sound reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann, with some influence from György Ligeti to reference the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
