TF:
It's a question even David Bowie couldn’t answer. Is there life on Mars? Well if Irish director Ruairí Robinson’s debut feature is anything to go by, there is indeed – and it ain’t pretty…
Nearing the end of a research mission to Mars, the crew of the Tantalus Base look set to return home empty-handed when science officer Petrovic (Goran Kostic) finds evidence of a new strain of bacteria on the surface. His field trip for a live sample doesn’t go quite as planned, forcing the captain (Elias Koteas) and his first officer (Liev Schreiber) to lead a rescue mission. Just who needs rescuing, however, is soon up for debate.
Playing like an indie Prometheus without the grand concept, TLDOM is a zombies-in-space movie that wears its influences on its sleeve. From Alien to The Thing via every claustrophobic sci-fi thriller and living-dead infection horror of note, no genre cliché is left unturned as, one-by-one, the Tantalus employees fall victim to the pathogen.
While the fi...
Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien sure has a lot to answer for. Not only did it (along with James Cameron’s Aliens) kick off a franchise of diminishing return sequels, but it also redefined the sci-fi/horror subgenre in a way no one has ever been able to live up to since. Before Alien, sci-fi horror flicks were cheapies for kiddes. Fun and insubstantial were the name of the game. Then Alien came along and all of a sudden the genre was breeding ground for potential blockbusters and with the exception of John Carpenter’s summertime-bomb-turned-cult-cl assic The Thing, no film has come close to matching it. All of which brings us to the British major-mini indie Last Days On Mars. The title and first five minutes or so suggest a thoughtful science fiction flick, but almost instantly it turns into a simple genre romp that should have been called Space Zombies.
I (heart) most everything by Scott, especially Blade Runner. This was a great read!
WGTC writes: In space, no one can hear you scream, or in The Last Days On Mars' case, no one can hear you yawn.
CS
Following the international trailer and new poster, Magnet Releasing has debuted the longer domestic trailer for December 6 sci-fi thriller The Last Days on Mars, starring Liev Schreiber, Elias Koteas, Romola Garai, Olivia Williams and Tom Cullen.