Month: May 2026

Life (2017)

Less.

Lifeless would be a more accurate title.

Even with Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds attached as astronauts in distress, this one never reaches orbit, and instead achieves only a template trajectory.

Six crew members on the International Space Station discover a single-cell organism among recent samples from Mars. What starts out as a wondrous moment, the meeting of intelligent life forms, quickly becomes another bug hunt, when everyone freaks out.

The astronauts get popped off one by one, as the rapidly adaptable alien known as Calvin, decides the crew is expendable.

The creature effects are decent, giving Calvin a gliding tadpole-starfish-octopoid fluidity through the thin atmosphere as it chases down its prey.

Unfortunately, it’s not frightening, so there’s no tension at play, even as the two survivors race for the escape pods on a space station that’s set for self destruction.

As silver linings go, Life is at least good to look at. The modeling and effects techs do a bang-up job. The International Space Station as both a vast and miraculous piece of technology, and a potential tomb that’s getting smaller all the time.

To his credit, director Daniel Espinosa handles the effects deftly, but the script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick is a lemon, unfolding in all-too-familiar fashion—with one exception.

The end of Life is not a happy one. Is it worth sitting through the rest for a mighty grim payoff?

Naw.

Scathing (2016)

Perhaps Florida filmmaker Joseph Mazzafero was anticipating negative reviews?

I actually saw Scathing several years ago but somehow the memory didn’t burn bright enough for me to recollect, whilst sifting through Tubi’s generous inventory of low-budget indie horror.

Rebellious teen Amanda (Allie Sparks) is lured out of her house at 3am by horny boyfriend Adam (Michael Frascino) and driven out to a secluded petting spot for an all-night make-out sesh.

Upon awakening, still knackered from too much tonsil hockey, they discover that the car won’t start, so Adam calls his buddy Steve (Chris Shepardson) to come and fix it.

Steve soon arrives with Daisy Duke-clad Stephanie (Paola Duque), and after declaring Adam’s car “a piece of shit” proceeds to get stoned and tell a long stupid joke about a cat.

The cast is then set upon by a very tall, long-haired dude in a welder’s helmet (John Kyle), who makes short work of Steve and carries Stephanie off to the wood shop for some sicky-icky torture porn that culminates in a spike through the forehead.

While the killer takes Stephanie apart, Adam and Amanda await their turn locked in the car. For like three days. No food, no water, no pee, no poop.

The idea that the maniac might return at any moment causes paralysis of the mind and body, apparently. Couldn’t they have just run for it?

Too risky, I guess.

Adam finally grows a spine and steps out of the car—and is immediately taken by the towering weirdo back to the shed for an extreme vasectomy, the results of which are proudly displayed by the giant to the gawking Amanda.

There are plenty more lurid twists afoot in Scathing, and you can find them in Wrong Turn and Psycho. Here then is a buffet of bone basic brutality, that includes a baby in the microwave, with a WTF ending that doesn’t clarify shit.

Does the killer get away? It doesn’t matter, because you won’t.