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Life is just thrilling, well-acted, and capably filmed enough to overcome an overall inability to add new wrinkles to the trapped-in-space genre.

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Daniel Espinosa

Jake Gyllenhaal

David Jordan

Rebecca Ferguson

Miranda North

Ryan Reynolds

Hiroyuki Sanada

Sho Murakami

Ariyon Bakare

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Review: 'Life’ is worth living for two freaky hours

Looking for intelligent life in the universe always seems like an OK plan until a savvy malevolent alien organism goes berserk on your space vessel.

Starring a couple of A-listers in Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal, the new sci-fi film Life (**½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) navigates very familiar terrain and unleashed creature terror. And while it shares more than a few commonalities with Ridley Scott’s seminal Alien , director Daniel Espinosa’s thriller gives audiences a seriously cool monster and a sinister twist on a survival-of-the-fittest theme.

The six-person crew aboard the International Space Station is wrapping up an eight-month mission to bring back soil samples and possible organic matter from Mars. Things are hairy right from the start, as mission specialist Rory Adams (Reynolds) has to use a crane arm to catch the out-of-control capsule, which was damaged on the way back from the red planet.

Ryan Reynolds 'terrified' daughter James in his 'Life' spacesuit

Luckily (or so it seems at the time), the astronauts dig in and find a microscopic life form far beyond anything they’ve ever seen on a cellular level. The evolutionary process is speedy and within a few weeks, Calvin — the name given to this cute, transparent starfish-y beastie — grows bigger and more intelligent, using surprising smarts to worm his way out of his confines and into the station’s nooks and crannies. The team and Calvin engage in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the alien turning into a shockingly adept predator ruling this enclosed food chain.

“Life’s very existence requires destruction,” says paraplegic scientist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) in a quiet moment before more chaos and carnage caused by a crafty Calvin. Much of the cosmic claustrophobia, body invasion and other genre elements create a palpable tension but are pretty standard stuff for sci-fi fans, and it’s not until the very end where the true horror satisfyingly presents itself.

The characters are mostly thin and act as fodder for Calvin’s increasingly devious nature, though Gyllenhaal’s role, veteran spaceman David Jordan, is at least nuanced in showcasing a guy who’s spent so much time in orbit he’d rather be there than on Earth. Also of note: Rebecca Ferguson’s microbiologist Miranda North, who has to weigh her and her colleagues' lives vs. the greater good of keeping Calvin far away from human civilization.

The screenplay (by Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) unsurprisingly gives all its one-liners to Reynolds, who’s ostensibly the film’s resident comic relief, and is well paced in pitting its primary villain vs. a bunch of space nerds. But it also goes further than just scare tactics: An underlying aspect of the narrative is how, in the wild (or among the stars), wonder and awe with the unknown takes a back seat to getting out alive for each life form on board, whether you have hands or tentacles.

The best moments from Ryan Reynolds' Hasty Pudding ceremony

When fully developed, Calvin is a vicious dose of visual-effects nightmare fuel, otherworldly but also oddly realistic in the primal way it moves and acts. Just as effective is composer Jon Ekstrand’s fabulous score, which combines majestic power chords connoting the majesty of space with the dissonance of what lies waiting for us out there.

It’s far from perfect, but Life ’s worth living for two freaky hours.

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As Sci-Fi, Life Is Just So-So. But As Horror, It Works.

It’s a bit early still, but I’d like to make a prediction: In the tradition of New York and Los Angeles getting engulfed by flame and flood and nuclear winter, the International Space Station is the next outpost of human civilization we’ll see habitually demolished onscreen, over and over again. It got a clobbering from debris in 2014 in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity , and it similarly takes a beating in the opening moments of Life. Is the ISS, a multinational research vessel that inspires schoolchildren and promotes cooperation among the scientific community, begging for a cinematic hubris check? If it is, you can bet there will be more to worry about than a little space trash.

Life follows a group of six astronauts aboard the ISS, tasked with examining a rock sample from Mars. Biologist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) has discovered a dormant single-cell organism in the sample. He manages to wake it up with a little heat and glucose (who among us can resist this combo?) and the world rejoices at the first discovery of extraterrestrial life. We see this primarily via an overhead shot of a packed Times Square — even in the near future, everyone will still descend on midtown to watch television. A group of children are given the opportunity to name the creature, and they name it after their elementary school: “Calvin.” Then Calvin starts growing, first into something resembling a couture pasty designed by H.R. Giger, then into a little floppy, translucent starfish. An analysis of his cellular structure reveals that he is “all muscle, all brain, and all eye.” He’s no bigger than a tennis ball when he crumples Hugh’s hand like a soda can and escapes his box in the lab. From there, he keeps finding food, and growing, and picking off the crew one by one.

Those inclined toward this kind of material will likely hold Life up unfavorably against the first Alien movie, which had a similar structure but better characters and more tactile horrors. But while Alien remains untouchable, and the xenomorphs themselves something out of a nightmare, Calvin — especially in his early, ephemeral, blob stage — is much more like something out of my nightmare. The CGI work is both obviously synthetic and vibrantly gross. In the zero-gravity environment, Calvin’s handiwork resembles the victims suspended in the black void from Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. I already used the word “crumple,” but yes, they’re crumpled.

There’s also the proximity to Earth — as the situation gets more dire, help is so close, yet so far. Even this close to home, no one can hear you scream. It would have been nice to have more character time with Jake Gyllenhaal’s David Jordan, who is nearing the record for consecutive days in space and looks like it. When his colleague Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson) urges him to return to Earth for a bit, he mumbles, with puppy-dog melancholy, “I like it up here.” Space madness is clearly closing in on him even before the E.T. hijinks commence. Gyllenhaal is in haunted Nightcrawler mode throughout, but is never quite given room in the script to explore the implications of that, other than to set up the dramatic irony of the film’s wicked, if predictable finale.

Life comes to us from a veritable Ryan Reynolds support group: Safe House director Daniel Espinosa and Deadpool writing duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, which makes a certain plot point involving Reynolds’s character pretty amusing. But otherwise, there’s little naughty snark here. There’s also not much insight or art to the direction; it’s Alien for short attention spans, Arrival for non-pacifists, with some remnant of ambition toward something headier. On that count, it falls short, but as a final-girl structured horror film, it has plenty of imaginative moments.

Whats most effective, and telling, is how levelheadedly our egghead protagonists handle the alien threat. “Calvin doesn’t hate us,” Hugh says. “He has to kill us in order to survive.” Later, the crew changes its tune: Before the final showdown, one survivor remarks, “I know it’s not scientific, but I feel pure fucking hatred for that thing.” Well, all right. None of this was ever going to be scientific, but it was nice of Life to pretend for a bit.

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Movie Review: Life (2017)

• Greg Eichelberger
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> March 28, 2017

From the premise that all extra-terrestrial life is harmful comes Life , a combination of “Alien,” “The Thing,” “ Gravity ,” “The Mummy” and a few other trapped-in-space or alien-assimilation movies that we all know and love (or tolerate in some cases). Life is the story of the six-member crew of the International Space Station who, while orbiting Mars, discover a new form of life. And, of course, we all know what happens next. That’s all well and good, though, since we are not expecting anything other than fast action and quick deaths, and the audience will certainly not be disappointed in the film’s rather short running time (just a tad over 100 minutes; no doubt folks in earlier years had more patience with story and character development than we currently have).

In space for almost a year, the crew (with a heavy international vibe going on), consists of two American studs (Jake Gyllenhaal, “ Nocturnal Animals ” and Ryan Reynolds, “ Deadpool ”), a Brit researcher (Ariyon Bakare, “ Jupiter Ascending ”), the Frenchwoman commander (Rebecca Ferguson, “ The Girl on the Train ”), a Russian technician (Olga Dihovichnaya, “House of Others”) and a Japanese scientist and new father to boot (Hiroyuki Sanada, “ The Wolverine ”).

Things are pretty mundane, but when a life form is brought aboard from the surface of Mars, the world celebrates while a bunch of goofy kids name it “Calvin” (after their elementary school). Meanwhile, Hugh Derry (Bakare), begins treating the species like his own offspring, coddling it and even bringing it back from suspended animation. There is not much suspense to realize that this action causes the semi-protoplasm to grab the guy’s hand and render him mostly useless for the rest of the film (plus the trailer gave that away).

It’s here that the astronauts, who are no more than cookie-cutter placeholders, violate not only NASA protocol, but every rule of motion pictures within this genre by opening the lab door and ultimately allowing the growing organism (now looking like a translucent octopus) to attack each of the Space Station members one by one (like we’ve seen before, right?). For example, an astronaut has the thing enter their mouth and come out even larger and stronger; another incident has the crazed being bouncing around in space (where it is not supposed to live, but it maintains enough oxygen to survive until it can re-enter through a thruster port; and finally, the creature is able to make its way into space suits and other sealed equipment, rendering it practically invincible.

The last resort calls for survivors to utilize a pair of escape pods, sending the creature into deep space while the other returns to Earth; it’s during this segment that a more than obvious twist may or may not take place (I even found myself saying to the person next to me, “Uh, there’s two pods and . . .”).

Nonetheless, director Daniel Espinosa (“ Child 44 ,” and doing his best Ridley Scott impression) makes fairly decent use of the limited time and produces some thrilling moments, while the camera work of Seamus McGarvey (“ Godzilla ”) is both claustrophobic and vast with some truly amazing scenes inside the space station; and the special effects (mostly the ever-changing alien life form) overseen by David Watkins (“ Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ”) is quite realistic and very frightening in some sequences.

It’s too bad all of this wonderful technology could not have supported a more original idea. Still, Life is not a bad ride, it’s just that most of us have lived it before.

Tagged: alien , astronaut , Earth , scientist , space , survival

I have been a movie fan for most of my life and a film critic since 1986 (my first published review was for "Platoon"). Since that time I have written for several news and entertainment publications in California, Utah and Idaho. Big fan of the Academy Awards - but wish it would go back to the five-minute dinner it was in May, 1929. A former member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and current co-host of "The Movie Guys," each Sunday afternoon on KOGO AM 600 in San Diego with Kevin Finnerty.

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Lots of violence, some language, in well-told alien story.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie is fairly downbeat, but it does have a c

Though the characters are largely victims, they re

Many characters are killed. A character drowns in

A man watches a video feed of his child being born

Several uses of "f--k," plus "mothe

Parents need to know that Life is a sci-fi/horror movie about a killer alien creature loose on board a satellite. There's lots of violence and tense, scary stuff. Many characters are killed; one is torn apart from the inside, with globs of floating blood, and another drowns in fluid. A lab rat is also…

Positive Messages

The movie is fairly downbeat, but it does have a clear theme: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Positive Role Models

Though the characters are largely victims, they represent an interesting mix of cultures and sexes. Only two characters are American and male; the rest of the diverse ensemble includes two European women, a Japanese man, and a black Englishman who requires a wheelchair while on Earth but gets to float free in space. All are treated as smart individuals, and none are tokens.

Violence & Scariness

Many characters are killed. A character drowns in fluid. Floating globs of blood. A broken, smashed hand. A lab rat is completely mangled and destroyed in a grotesque way. Flame thrower. Monster attacks. Monster eating blood, devouring bodies. Tense, scary moments.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man watches a video feed of his child being born (not graphic). A joke about "do they know who the father is?"

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k," plus "motherf----r" and "s--t," as well as "Jesus" and "Jesus Christ" (as exclamations).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Life is a sci-fi/horror movie about a killer alien creature loose on board a satellite. There's lots of violence and tense, scary stuff. Many characters are killed; one is torn apart from the inside, with globs of floating blood, and another drowns in fluid. A lab rat is also destroyed in a gruesome way, and a man's hand is smashed and broken. Language is strong, with several uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "'s--t," and "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation). One character watches a video feed of his child being born, though nothing graphic is shown (someone makes a joke about "who's the father?"). Overall, it's too intense for younger or more sensitive teens, but slightly older viewers may enjoy the well-crafted tension. Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds headline a cast that's diverse overall, with smart, realistic characters. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (23)

Based on 10 parent reviews

Good space movie

What's the story.

In LIFE, six astronauts are aboard a satellite orbiting Earth as part of the Mars Pilgrim Mission. They retrieve a probe from Mars that contains a microscopic life form from the Red Planet. Biologist Hugh Derry ( Ariyon Bakare ) excitedly studies it, changes atmospheric conditions, and watches it grow at an alarming rate. Then it attacks and escapes, wounding his hand. Another crew member jumps in to intervene, but the creature, called "Calvin," kills him. It's up to the rest of the crew -- including Miranda North ( Rebecca Ferguson ), David Jordan ( Jake Gyllenhaal ), and Sho Kendo ( Hiroyuki Sanada ) -- to try to contain the monster. If they can't, they'll never be able to return to Earth.

Is It Any Good?

This sci-fi creature feature doesn't really do anything we haven't seen before, but its execution -- including smooth camerawork and tense editing and music -- makes it reasonably gripping. In Life , director Daniel Espinosa glides his camera along the corridors of the satellite as if it, too, were weightless, and the crisp editing and the intense score provide plenty of nervous suspense. It's not as dark and shadowy as the similar Alien , but the lights are used to interesting effect.

The characters are also interesting. Not only do they represent a diverse cross-section of cultures and sexes, but they're treated like smart people. No one wanders off alone to check something out, and no one splits up. Generally, the movie avoids the kinds of cliches the genre routinely falls back on. Plus, no one is an invincible hero stepping up to save the day. Even the creature is given credit for being clever -- a worthy adversary. Overall, Life is pretty basic, and it's a familiar story, but any story can feel fresh again when it's told well.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Life 's violence . How gruesome is it? How much blood is shown? How does the movie use violence to generate suspense? Does exposure to violent media make kids more aggressive?

Is the movie scary ? What's the appeal of scary movies/monster movies?

How did you feel about the diverse cast? Did they feel like real people? Were any of them stereotypes ?

Do the characters show courage? What makes someone a hero? What role does sacrifice play in the movie?

What did you learn from the movie about the International Space Station and its history and goals? How does it encourage collaboration across nations?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 24, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : June 20, 2017
• Cast : Jake Gyllenhaal , Rebecca Ferguson , Ryan Reynolds
• Director : Daniel Espinosa
• Inclusion Information : Latino directors, Female actors
• Studios : Sony Pictures Entertainment , Columbia Pictures
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : Space and Aliens
• Run time : 103 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language throughout, some sci-fi violence and terror
• Last updated : April 19, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

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1 gritty fantasy series is the perfect a song of ice & fire replacement (& has movies in the works), the lego movie’s villain story calls back to a 32-year-old change made by the real toy company.

• The Life movie ending is a shocking twist that reveals the heroes' plan has failed, leaving Earth vulnerable to the alien menace.
• The devastating ending showcases the futile attempts of the characters to save the world, highlighting the threat posed by the new lifeform.
• Director Daniel Espinosa purposefully included the dark and bleak ending, drawing inspiration from the noir genre and believing it was a fundamental part of the movie.

The Life movie ending took audiences by surprise in 2017, offering a bleak and haunting conclusion to the sci-fi horror movie. While Life was not a box office or critical hit, it managed to impress many fans with its take on the contained killer alien story that draws a lot of inspiration from Ridley Scott's Alien . However, the aspect of the movie that seems to get the most attention is the unforgettable ending that is worth examining further.

Life stars Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Ryan Reynolds as a team of scientists working on a space station that discovers a living organism they dub "Calvin," who was found in a soil sample from Mars. As can be expected with horror movies in outer space , the organism soon turns hostile and starts absorbing crew members to nurture itself and grow larger. As Calvin continues to grow, it threatens not only the crew of the space station, but also the population of Earth if it manages to reach the nearby planet. It makes for an intense sci-fi ride leading up to Life 's memorable ending.

What Happens In The Life Ending

The Life movie ending comes with only two remaining scientists alive and battling Calvin to prevent an alien invasion of Earth . Despite numerous attempts to kill Calvin, including burning him with a flamethrower and a failed attempt to eject him from the station, David (Gyllenhaal) and Miranda (Ferguson) hatch a plan. They know that under no circumstances can Calvin reach Earth since he'd quickly evolve and annihilate the human race as it continues to grow, so David proposes to sacrifice himself by luring Calvin into an escape pod and heading for deep space.

Meanwhile, Miranda will take another pod and head back to Earth to warn of other lifeforms from Mars. The final few minutes of Life find David succeeding in luring Calvin into his pod, while Miranda also escapes. The pods are hit by some debris as they detach, however, sending one into space. While David attempts to manually steer the pod Calvin soon overwhelms him, and the movie cuts to the Earthbound pod as it breaks the atmosphere.

The Twist In The Life Ending

The Life movie ending provides a unique horror movie twist ending that shocks the audience by revealing that the heroes' plan has failed. When some Vietnamese fishermen see the Earthbound pod land and quickly rush to help, it is revealed that it is David inside and he is covered in some kind of cocoon. The cruel ending of Life reveals it was Miranda's pod that was sent flying into space, with the last viewers see of her being the character screaming as she spirals into the void. Meanwhile, David desperately begs the fishermen not to open his pod, but the final scene is the door being pried open as more boats arrive.

The Meaning Of The Life Ending

The Life movie ending is a devastating blow to the audience as the desperate and selfless acts of Miranda and David to save the Earth from this alien menace proves to be futile. Miranda is faced with dying alone in the cold depths of space while David can only watch helplessly as the dangerous new form of life is free upon the world. Indeed, the ending also gives new meaning to the movie's title. While it initially seemed to refer to the new lifeform of Calvin, it also could refer to Calvin feeding off of other life and how, ultimately, life on Earth is now threatened.

Given that Life was not a huge success, there is little hope of the movie getting a sequel, but that is fine given the ending. While there are plenty of questions about what will happen next, the Life movie ending was not meant to set up a sequel. Instead, it is more similar to the ending of The Thing which also hints at an alien species making its way into populated areas and taking over. However, the fact that the audience is left to imagine what happens next is more effective than actually seeing it.

What The Director Said About The Life Ending

The Life movie ending is quite a dark and bleak conclusion for a big blockbuster with A-list stars. However, it was something that was very important for director Daniel Espinosa to include in the movie. Espinosa explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he took inspiration for the ending from the noir genre which was known for its cynical finales. He also insisted the ending was a big part of the reason he wanted to make Life , so he was vocal about that fact with the producers before filming even began:

"When I met the producers, I told them, “I completely understand that this ending might not be the preferable choice, but for me it was a fundamental part of the reason I want to do the movie.” If we couldn’t see eye to eye with the ending, we should part ways before we get something started. My producers were completely supportive, which I thought was surprising and bold."

Indeed, the bleak movie ending does feel like something special outside of Life 's more mainstream feel. While that could be part of the reason the movie didn't become more popular, those who do enjoy the movie, point to the ending of Life as its best aspect.

• SR Originals

Life Movie Ending Explained (With Full Plot Details)

Life is a sci-fi thriller brought to us by director Jorge Daniel Espinosa. The film is about a crew on a space station which is conducting research on Mars’ soil. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare and Olga Dihovichnaya. This is a rare film of Jake’s where you don’t have to put in many hours to understand the movie’s plot. It’s rather straightforward except for a few bits. There was a rumour that the film is a prequel to a movie about Venom (Spiderman). Well, no it’s not. Ryan Reynolds is now Deadpool so his contract wouldn’t allow him to feature in a Venom’s prequel. Here’s the plot and ending of the movie Life explained; spoilers ahead.

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Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer .  You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

Life Movie Explained

Dr. David Jordan (Jake) – Senior Medical Officer Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca) – Quarantine Officer Rory “Roy” Adams (Ryan) – Pilot of the International Space Station Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki) – System Engineer Hugh Derry (Ariyon) – Lead Scientist Katerina Golovkina (Olga) – Commander of the Crew

What is the crew up to?

Well, they are on a mission to collect and analyze soil from Mars. They suspect that they may have found life.

What happens in the beginning, what are they trying to catch?

One of the pods that contains the soil sample is out loose. So Roy heads out and uses a clamp to catch the pod floating by. This part is not very significant but if they missed catching the pod, there would be no story. Because in the pod, is Martian soil and in the soil is a single cell of Martian origin.

The single cell seems to be dead. But when Hugh changes the atmospheric settings to match ancient Earth, the organism is revived from its dormant state. The organism begins to grow and is now multicellular. Hugh notices that each of the cells, unlike human cells – is all muscle, all brain, and all eye. In humans, different types of cells come together to form eyes, muscles and the brain. For the alien, the cells are kind of supercells. I know I’m trying to justify the explanation in the film. But honestly, I have no idea what the concept of this all brawn and brain thing is. But hey, it’s fiction . America names the alien Calvin. The organism grows rapidly. However, there is an accident in the lab that messes up the atmospheric conditions. Calvin goes dormant. Hugh, the smartass, uses electricity to try and resuscitate Calvin. Calvin gets pissed and breaks the electricity wand and as a bonus, breaks Hugh’s hand too. Hugh faints. Calvin uses the broken wand to rip out of containment unit. Calvin then consumes a friendly neighbourhood lab rat and grows in size.

Roy enters to save Hugh. He gets Hugh out but gets trapped with Calvin. Roy tries to flame-throw Calvin but fire doesn’t seem to affect it. Calvin retaliates by entering Roy’s mouth and ripping him from inside out. Calvin exits Roy and has become even bigger. The still active flame thrower triggers a fire alarm and air vents open up. Calvin escapes from one of the air vents.

The ship loses connectivity to Earth. Sho sends out an SOS call which reaches Earth unknown to the crew. Katerina decides to step out and have a look at the antenna. She realizes that the coolant has been consumed by Calvin as food. This has caused the comm failure as well. Calvin attacks her as she tries to reenter. Her suit is damaged and coolant from her suit enters her head chamber. She realizes that the rest of the crew would be put in danger and hence decides to drown and die outside. But Calvin makes its way to the thrusters to enter.

How is Calvin able to breathe outside the ship? Doesn’t it need oxygen?

Well, Calvin is shown to be desperate, it’s trying to get to the oxygen in Katerina’s suit. After she dies, Calvin is desperate to enter the space station from the Thrusters. Calvin is a lot bigger that it was in the containment unit. Hence it’s able to last a while longer without oxygen. Okay, then how about the pressure? Isn’t it vacuum in space? Alright, fine, this bit makes no sense at all.

So why is Calvin on a killing spree?

It’s primal instinct. It is a carbon-based lifeform, it needs to survive, it needs food. Humans are food. Humans have also pissed it off. So it’s merely reacting to protect itself.

Sho tries to turn on the thrusters as Calvin tries to enter them. He runs low on fuel doing this. Calvin is unharmed. Apart from this, all the thrusting has caused the space station to begin entering Earth’s orbit. They can’t have Calvin entering Earth. So they save the remaining fuel to correct the course out of the Earth’s orbit and Calvin reenters the ship.

What’s up with Hugh and how is Calvin on his leg?

As the crew plans to cut off atmosphere from the rest of the station except their own, Calvin has already made it to their module. Unknown to the crew, Calvin latches on to Hugh’s legs. Hugh can’t feel this because he’s paraplegic. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? Hugh can’t feel his legs. He goes into cardiac arrest. Let’s take a minute and see what Hugh is up to here. Hugh has some crazy affinity with Calvin. He sees Calvin approach while the others are taping up the place. He doesn’t say anything. He actually allows Calvin to latch on to his leg. He then goes on to talk about how the nature of life is through destruction. How Calvin doesn’t hate them but has to kill them for its own survival. He then touches his leg and then begins to lose consciousness. Then he says “I’m sorry”. Hugh’s helping Calvin here. He’s lost it and the crew doesn’t realize this. As they use a defibrillator on Hugh, they notice Calvin emerging from the leg. They make a run for it. David and Miranda make it into a module and Sho shuts himself into a sleep capsule. Calvin has eaten a part of Hugh along with his tracker. So now they are able to track Calvin’s location. Hugh dies.

What’s that thing about the firewall?

David and Miranda use Hugh’s dead body to lure it into a module. Remember that SOS call that reached Earth? Well, Miranda had planned earlier that in case the crew loses control of the space station, Earth should just send a spacecraft to push the space station into deep space. So the incoming spacecraft is doing just that.

It locks-on and begins to push. Sho thinks that rescue has arrived and makes his way to the spacecraft and manually opens the latch. Calvin attacks. David and Miranda try to save Sho but they can’t. The manual hatch opening sends the capsule spinning onto the space station damaging it severely. The temperature and oxygen begin to drop rapidly.

David and Miranda are in a module and Calvin in the other. As they prepare to die, they realize all the pushing has caused the space station to drop into Earth’s orbit again. Calvin could survive the reentry, and Earth is doomed. David has one last idea. He recollects two escape pods that are configured to autopilot back to Earth. He tells Miranda to get into one pod and make it to Earth. He decides to lure Calvin with the oxygen glowing thingy things into the other pod. He plans to override the autopilot and fly into deep space with Calvin onboard.

Life Movie Ending Explained

David lures Calvin into his pod and Miranda enters hers. Miranda has a navigation failure and begins to go off course from Earth. It is her pod that begins to float into deep space not David’s. David tries to pilot his pod into deep space but Calvin immobilizes him. David is unable to control the ship and it enters the Earth’s orbit. It lands safely in Vietnam. Two fishermen come to check the pod out. The ending of Life reveals that while the audience is made to think that Miranda is the one who enters Earth, we are shown that is actually David’s pod with Calvin. Surprisingly, David is alive and Calvin has spread out like a web over David.

Why has Calvin kept David alive?

Well, it could be because the reentry drastically changed the atmospheric conditions in the pod which may have caused Calvin to go dormant. Alternatively, Calvin plans to use David as bait to get out of the pod. Either way, the film ends with multiple boats coming to the pod to rescue David as he screams for them to not to. They manage to open the Pod. The film ends. Earth is doomed unless there is a sequel.

Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

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Alien: Romulus

While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

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A new ‘Hunger Games’ book — and movie — is coming

FILE - Suzanne Collins arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 17, 2014. Collins is returning to the ravaged, post-apocalyptic land of Panem for a new “The Hunger Games” novel. Scholastic announced Thursday that “Sunrise on the Reaping” will be published March 18, 2025. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Inspired by an 18th century Scottish philosopher and the modern scourge of misinformation, Suzanne Collins is returning to the ravaged, post-apocalyptic land of Panem for a new “The Hunger Games” novel.

Scholastic announced Thursday that “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the fifth volume of Collins’ blockbuster dystopian series, will be published March 18, 2025. The new book begins with the reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, set 24 years before the original “Hunger Games” novel, which came out in 2008, and 40 years after Collins’ most recent book, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.”

Lionsgate, which has released film adaptations of all four previous “Hunger Games” books, announced later on Thursday that “Sunrise on the Reaping” will open in theaters on Nov. 20, 2026. Francis Lawrence, who has worked on all but the first “Hunger Games” movie, will return as director.

The first four “Hunger Games” books have sold more than 100 million copies and been translated into dozens of languages. Collins had seemingly ended the series after the 2010 publication of “Mockingjay,” writing in 2015 that it was “time to move on to other lands.” But four years later, she stunned readers and the publishing world when she revealed she was working on what became “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” released in 2020 and set 64 years before the first book.

Collins has drawn upon Greek mythology and the Roman gladiator games for her earlier “Hunger Games” books. But for the upcoming novel, she cites the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume.

“With ‘Sunrise on the Reaping,’ I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” Collins said in a statement. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

The “Hunger Games” movies are a multibillion dollar franchise for Lionsgate. Jennifer Lawrence portrayed heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film versions of “The Hunger Games,” “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay,” the last of which came out in two installments. Other featured actors have included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland.

“Suzanne Collins is a master storyteller and our creative north star,” Lionsgate chair Adam Fogelson said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more fortunate than to be guided and trusted by a collaborator whose talent and imagination are so consistently brilliant.”

The film version of “Songbirds and Snakes,” starring Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, came out last year. This fall, a “Hunger Games” stage production is scheduled to debut in London.

‘Under Paris’ Review: At Last, a Shark Movie Worthy of Swimming in the Wake of ‘Jaws’

Directed by Xavier Gens ('Lupin'), Netflix's thriller starring Bérénice Bejo makes the most of its premise.

By Michael Nordine

Michael Nordine

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“What if there were a shark in the Seine?” is, one can only assume, a question that Parisians ponder on a daily basis. It’s also brilliant in its simplicity, if not quite as appealingly silly a high-concept premise as “what if there were snakes on a plane?” and “what if the moon … fell?” Look no further than “ Under Paris ” for an answer to the hypothetical that surely keeps Emmanuel Macron up at night, as Netflix’s new thriller swims rather than sinks as it adds life to a genre that’s been bloodless for far too long.

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Others include a blood-soaked Sophia emerging from the water after her own close encounter, Lilith sending one of those activists to a watery grave and a sequence set in the Catacombs you’ll have to see to believe. Gens is a visual storyteller first and foremost, which fits the material like a wetsuit. There isn’t any dialogue as instantly quotable as “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” but as a sensory experience, “Under Paris” is never less than seaworthy.

The fact that you can already tell where this is all headed might make you smarter than the fictional mayor, but it’s unlikely to hinder your enjoyment of the inevitable climax. Syfy-esque premise notwithstanding, “Under Paris” (the original title, “Sous la Seine,” is, unsurprisingly, much more pleasing to the ear) is a smart blockbuster that would have been best experienced on the big screen — especially given how anemic the summer box office has been thus far.

If you can resist the joy of Bejo repeatedly declaring “c’est pas possible” upon being confronted with yet another seeming impossibility — such as, oh, the fact that mako sharks don’t live in freshwater — then perhaps your time would be better spent rewatching her Oscar-nominated turn in “The Artist” instead. You’d be missing out, however, as “Under Paris” is so assured in its plotting that it doesn’t even qualify as a guilty pleasure — and, for the record, there is an explanation for Lilith’s unique adaptation.

Few movies deserve the “often imitated, never replicated” designation quite like “Jaws” does, as every truly great shark movie that has followed in its wake can be counted on one hand with a few missing fingers. “Under Paris” might just be the best of them, which isn’t the faint praise it might sound like.

“Under Paris” is now streaming on Netflix.

• Production: (France-Belgium) A Netflix release and presentation of a Let Me Be production, in association with Umedia, Ufund, Kaly Prods., Program Store. Producer: Vincent Roget, Bastien Sirodot.
• Crew: Director: Xavier Gens. Screenplay: Yannick Dahan, Maud Heywang, Xavier Gens. Camera: Nicolas Massart. Editor: Riwanon Le Beller. Music: Alex Cortés, Anthony d'Amario, Edouard Rigaudière.
• With: Bérénice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant, Anaïs Parello, Anne Marivin. (French dialogue)

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‘Hit Man’ Says Contract Killers Aren’t Real. Here’s the Truth.

The romantic shenanigans are the stuff of Hollywood, but the film’s fake contract killer is based on a real man profiled in a Texas Monthly article.

By Sarah Bahr

“Hit men don’t really exist!” an exasperated undercover pretend assassin says in Netflix’s new romantic action comedy, “ Hit Man .” But the very existence of the film, which is loosely based on a seemingly strait-laced community college instructor who moonlighted as a fake assassin for the Houston police, proves just how much they fascinate us.

Though plenty of officers have worn wires and impersonated hit men in murder-for-hire investigations, the film’s inspiration, Gary Johnson, was the “Laurence Olivier of the field,” according to a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth. Over a decades-long career, relying on a bevy of accents and a penchant for being a sympathetic listener, Johnson, who died in 2022, managed to ensnare more than 60 people who tried to hire him.

That’s just the kind of character that’s catnip for a leading-man-in-the-making like Glen Powell, who plays a version of Johnson in “Hit Man.” Of course, the actor and his director Richard Linklater, who wrote the script together, added a few Hollywood touches, including a rom-com plot involving the fictional Johnson and a woman (Adria Arjona) hoping to hire him to kill her husband.

But some of the movie’s most outlandish plot elements — like the teenager who tries to pay Johnson partly in Atari computer games — did really happen . Here’s the story behind the movie and a look at hit men in real life.

Who was Gary Johnson, whose life inspired the film?

To his neighbors, he was a mild-mannered, middle-aged man who lived alone with two cats and worked in human resources at a company downtown, as he told them . (The baggy jorts and love of birding are Hollywood inventions.)

In reality, Johnson, who spent a year as a military policeman in Vietnam, was an investigator for the district attorney’s office in Houston. On the side, he taught classes in human sexuality and general psychology two nights a week at a local community college. (The film switches it up, making Powell’s character a professor working for the police on the side and relocating the action to New Orleans.)

How did he land his pretend assassin gig?

He wasn’t drafted to fill in for a corrupt cop who had been suspended, as the film has it.

Johnson began working as an undercover agent in 1989 when the district attorney’s office received a tip about a woman looking for someone to kill her husband. Johnson’s bosses asked him to disguise himself as a hit man and wear a wire to meet her.

Posing as a tough-as-nails biker — and wearing a necklace with a miniature silver human skull — he agreed to meet her at a bowling alley.

It turned out he had a knack for being a sympathetic listener, as well as for getting people to clearly state the crimes they wanted him to commit — which is necessary for a conviction. The woman who tried to hire Johnson was sentenced to 80 years in prison, and he continued working as a fake hit man.

Did he really wear disguises and adopt accents?

Yes, though not to the degree Powell’s character does in the film.

“It was Glen who really ran with those false identities that Gary creates for each of his cases,” Linklater said in a Netflix interview . “I was like, ‘Should we really do a Russian accent?’ But Glen just pushed all of that to the max, and I love how it came out.”

According to Texas Monthly, Johnson’s acting skills were his real strength — he was equally believable as a mobster willing to kill for any amount of money, or as a sleek, skilled assassin who wouldn’t take on a job for less than six figures, depending on the client.

“It got to a point where I would be transcribing a tape of one of his murder-for-hire conversations, and I could not tell it was Gary on the tape,” Esmeralda Noyola, a secretary in the special-crimes division of the Houston district attorney’s office, told the magazine . “Gary was that good at changing accents and disguising his voice.”

Did he really strike up romance with a woman who tried to hire him?

No, though Johnson told Hollandsworth that on one — and only one — occasion in his decades-long career, he referred a woman who tried to hire him to kill her abusive boyfriend to social services rather than organize a sting operation.

Was his cover ever blown?

Just once, according to Texas Monthly, when an informant felt guilty about giving up a friend and told the potential client who Johnson really was. (The client, unsurprisingly, backed out.)

But even when The Houston Chronicle wrote about his cases in articles that contained Johnson’s real name, oblivious clients kept seeking him out.

Do real hit men exist?

Yes, but not in the way Hollywood would have you think of them. While history is certainly riddled with enforcers for gangs and organized crime families, the average person can’t just Google “how to hire a hit man” and pay someone to do the deed. (Dark-web murder commission sites like Slayers Hitmen and Azerbaijani Eagles, are, in fact, scams , with no known murder attributed to any of them.)

Earlier this year, Dennis Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The New York Times that the average person’s idea of a slick, skilled hit man is “pretty much myth,” adding that a contract killer is usually “nothing more than a thug who offers or agrees to a one-off payday.”

“Which is why they get caught,” he said.

Who are some notable contract killers?

The actor Woody Harrelson’s father, Charles Voyde Harrelson, for one, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1973 after killing a grain dealer in Texas for $2,500. Then, once he was released after only five years (because of good behavior), he was convicted in 1982 of murdering a federal district judge, a job for which he charged a drug dealer $250,000. He was serving two life sentences when he died of a heart attack in prison in 2007 at age 68.

Jeanette Van Nessen, the Dutch assassin whose own death inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie, “Munich,” reportedly charged more than $80,000 per hit.

Also, mobsters.

How common are murder-for-hire plots?

According to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, there were just seven arrests statewide for contract killing or attempts in 2022. And that was an atypical year: The seven arrests matched the total for the five previous years combined.

Nationally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation works undercover on about 70 to 90 murder-for-hire cases each year.

How much does it cost to have someone killed?

Estimates vary depending on factors like the difficulty of the hit and the prominence of the target, but according to F.B.I. news releases, fees have ranged from $25,000 to kill a spouse to $600 for a girlfriend .

Do police departments really use fake hit men?

Yes, and thanks to a long line of hit-man movies like David Fincher’s “The Killer,” a substantial subset of the population believes that if they just search hard enough, they’ll be able to find someone willing to murder anyone for cold, hard cash.

Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times. More about Sarah Bahr

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On stage, comedians use their words to make their audience laugh, gasp, or think—sometimes simultaneously. But what happens when a joke is used against a comedian? It’s one of the many thorny ideas Ally Pankiw ’s bold feature debut “I Used to Be Funny” wrestles with over the course of its emotional story. 

When we first meet Sam ( Rachel Sennott ), she’s in a very serious funk, barely making it to the shower, withdrawn from the limelight of her local comedy club, and her good friends and concerned roommates Paige ( Sabrina Jalees ) and Philip ( Caleb Hearon ) are covering her rent. Why she is in such a state is revealed through a breadcrumb trail of flashbacks and passing conversations. We learn that Sam was also once an au pair for a troubled young teen named Brooke ( Olga Petsa ), whose mother is dying, her aunt Jill ( Dani Kind ) can only help so much, and her father Cameron ( Jason Jones ) is tied up with work. Sam steps into her life as a kind of supportive older sister, but that too is talked about in the past tense. Sam used to be funny, but no longer. What happened to her? 

Written and directed by Pankiw, Sam’s story weaves between her present emotional turmoil and the outgoing version of herself who’s funny and caring. Pankiw carefully constructs her narrative, doling out just enough morsels of information to keep the audience intrigued in the mystery without getting in its characters' way. We see Sam and Brooke grow close then apart in Pankiw’s fractured timeline, which lends further meaning to each previous interaction when seen together. Their shared moments together are the highlight of “I Used to Be Funny,” so the contrasts in their dynamic before and after an unspoken incident make the loss of their camaraderie feel even more pronounced. 

Pankiw’s movie does more than just follow the adventures of a babysitter/stand-up comedian and her young but troubled charge. It soon becomes an exploration of trauma and its effect on one’s creativity and their relationships. As this mystery seeps into every aspect of Sam’s life, like water flooding a home, it leaves behind both visible and invisible damage in its wake. The violence she experiences ripples out to affect those she cares for in unintentional ways. Pankiw explores the issue of Sam’s words being used against her, with her own jokes becoming weapons against their creator in a court, a reminder that the conversations sparked by #MeToo are still far from over. In trying to reclaim her own narrative, Sam must work even harder to hold onto her comedic self and the relationships that matter most to her lest they too are destroyed. 

To bring Sam’s arc to life, Sennott essentially plays two characters, one before and one after the event. In one portion of the movie, she’s bright, energetic, and unafraid to deliver raunchy punchlines onstage or argue over Team Jacob or Edward to make a teenager smile. In the other half of the movie, Sennot looks worn down by the world; her shoulders are shrugged as if to protect herself, and she walks the apartment like a ghost of the outgoing personality we see in brief flashbacks. Although her previous roles in movies like “ Shiva Baby ,” “ Bodies Bodies Bodies ,” and “ Bottoms ” showcased her comedic chops, Sennott proves herself every bit as sharp as a dramatic actress. 

Many of the funniest comedians are not afraid to dig deep, expose their vulnerable side, and just when most of us would break out the waterworks to a therapist, build up to some insightful punchline, shifting the tone from tragedy to comedy and inviting us to laugh at the absurdity of life and our shared human experiences. 

“I Used to Be Funny” works through its themes in a thought-provoking way, structuring the story more like a mystery to be solved for its main character to move forward and touching on issues of consent and relationships along the way. Pankiw and Sennott bring Sam’s story to life with an inventive yet sensitive approach, creating a sympathetic portrait of someone learning to cope with the tragedies of life and embrace their funny side despite everything.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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I Used to Be Funny (2024)

105 minutes

Rachel Sennott as Sam

Olga Petsa as Brooke Renner

Jason Jones as Cameron

Sabrina Jalees as Paige

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