Rebecca Ferguson 104-Minute Underrated Sci-Fi Alien Thriller Lands on Streaming – And It Deserves a Rewatch

From A Quiet Place to War of the Worlds, movies have repeatedly imagined the many ways that humans probably would not survive an alien invasion. Some of them keep the little green men outside our atmosphere, but even in those cases, the superiority of the otherworldly creatures is obvious. While Alien remains arguably the best-known example of this subgenre of space horror, plenty of lesser-known films have used the tropes of alien sci‑fi to deliver genuinely riveting horror experiences. The 2017 gem Life, starring Rebecca Ferguson in her first foray into science fiction (before Silo), has a new streaming release, and like its genre brethren, it suggests that maybe space exploration isn’t the best idea.

We Should Have Learned By Now That Aliens Are Meant to Be Left Alone

Life tells the story of an astronaut crew aboard the International Space Station on a groundbreaking mission. The six-person team is in charge of retrieving a soil probe inbound from Mars, which could contain a sample of an extraterrestrial organism. What first looks like a dormant cell becomes a being that’s able to replicate human movement. The crew names it Calvin, and initially, it seems almost cute.

However, it isn’t. Calvin sees an opportunity to attack the biologist studying the sample, and quickly breaks loose. When it starts growing and shows signs of adaptation, the crew aboard the ISS realizes they will have to make some sacrifices in order to stop Calvin from exterminating the human race.

A Solid Piece of Modern Space Horror That’s Been Sadly Forgotten

Starring Ferguson alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Ryan Reynolds, Life landed in theaters in March 2017 to little fanfare. It grossed over $100 million against a sizable production budget of $58 million, and faded away from public memory quickly. The critical reception was mixed, and though it still holds a 67% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score is Rotten, at 55%.

Does Life deserve a rewatch? The short answer is yes. It’s well-acted, doesn’t beat around the bush when revealing its theme, and the action sequences are intense enough to make viewers clutch their partners in terror. Though it’s an alien horror movie, the creature doesn’t exactly cause terror, but director Daniel Espinosa does a pretty good job of building tension by basically using the claustrophobic aspect of being trapped in a space vessel that never feels safe.

Perhaps the best thing about the film is its ending — a bold twist that dares to step into the bleak territory where happy endings are secondary, and the worst actually happens. Under its questionable CGI, there stands a solid movie that delivers thrills and doesn’t aim to reinvent the genre, but simply selects its most durable tropes and lines them up in a feature that should be revisited and redeemed.

Fortunately, Life has found a new streaming home. The 2017 sci-fi horror gem has been added to Hulu as part of its August update, alongside other newly arriving titles such as 2012, Ex Machina, Jurassic Park, and the Men in Black series. If you’ve never seen it — or it’s been long enough that you’re ready to revisit it — this is the perfect month to do it.