Life vs. Everest

smatticus

on 5/12/2017

Two Jake Gyllenhaal films that fall in the mediocre category. Everest was visually spectacular film with great performances from an all-star cast, but is constrained by a story which doesn't have as much lasting impact as the premise would suggest and paradoxically loses momentum as it builds towards the climax. These problems are largely due to the film being based on true events which, unlike a lot of "based on true story" films which I have seen, genuinely rob the film of tension or dramatic payoff if you know how they played out in reality. Life, on the hand, is a film which again has impressive visuals and decent performances from the cast, even if they are someone stilted by the dialogue, but in this case the story is an uninspired rip-off of Alien with the visual inspiration of Gravity. While the alien creature is arguably one of the more original designs the Sci-Fi/Horror genre has seen for a while now, the film could have benefited from more visceral horror (the body horror/gore feels weirdly restrained for an R/15-rated film), and ultimately the film follows horror conventions by having the characters do stupid stuff in order to facilitate the plot. This last point is made even more frustrating by the fact that the film initially goes out of its way to set up a credible environment in which people think and act rationally, but can't follow through on this to the end, indicating lazy writing. On reflection, Life is the marginally more entertaining film, but Everest is probably marginally better and at least has a valid excuse for why the plot doesn't serve the film as well as it potentially could. Everest wins.