Trailer
Plot summary
A crewless spacecraft returns from Mars and enters Earth orbit carrying soil samples that may contain alien life. The International Space Station crew brings the probe aboard, and exobiologist Hugh Derry reawakens a dormant cell. The cell quickly develops into a multi-celled organism, which schoolchildren name Calvin. After a shift in atmosphere makes Calvin go dormant, Hugh uses an electric shock to revive it. Calvin becomes aggressive, breaks Hugh's hand, and frees itself from its enclosure by crafting a tool. It feeds on a lab rat and gets bigger. Engineer Rory Adams pulls Hugh clear, but Calvin seizes Rory's leg, so David Jordan closes off the lab. When fire does not stop Calvin, it slips into the ventilation system. The crew's attempt to warn Earth is cut short when the station's communications go down.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Life (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The eight-minute long take that opens Life was created by Industrial Light & Magic using an International Space Station model sculpted by Double Negative, which handled most of the film's other visual effects; Daniel Espinosa called it "the inverse version of Gravity".
- Stock footage of a crowd reacting to Spider-Man catching Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3 was reused in a trailer for Life, sparking theories that Life was secretly an origin story for the symbiote, fueled by the announced Venom film and by screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick having written a Venom script.
- To emulate the lack of gravity aboard the International Space Station, the actors in Life were suspended by wires that were erased in post-production.
- Composer Jon Ekstrand aimed for an "atonal-horror score with some melodic elements", opening with more melodic, classical tones so as not to give away the horror early; Daniel Espinosa told him to seek a Bernard Herrmann-like sound, with Khachaturian's influence referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey.
