Thursday, October 10, 2013

MOVIE OF THE MONTH: SEPTEMBER 2013


Director  : Ruairi Robinson
Story       : Clive Dawson
Camera   : Robbie Ryan
Studio     : British Film Institute
Release    : 19 September 2013
Running  : 91 minutes
Language : English

Cinematic appreciation is all a matter of perspective. To some viewers, the new indie sci-fi horror flick 'The Last Days on Mars' will feel like a patently familiar or even simplistic rehash of themes, ideas, settings, and characters we've all seen before. To others, 'The Last Days on Mars' will come across more like one of those (virtually countless) sci-fi (mis-)adventure films from the 1950s; films in which the promise of visiting a distant planet was almost as interesting as the people and the creatures who spend time on that planet.

Plot-wise, Ruairi Robinson's movie is certainly nothing revolutionary: it's the story of eight people who are spending their last 18 hours on the surface of Mars before packing up and heading for home. Obviously this is not how it works out. Given the film's title and tone, it should come as no surprise to learn that the crew of the Mars expedition stumbles across something deadly. To Mr. Robinson's credit, 'The Last Days on Mars' does not offer a standard monster as the threat. Without giving anything away, let's just say that one foolhardy explorer discovers a biological life, yes, on Mars and it's more like a virus than a monster.

Thus begins a fairly standard but consistently well-made "outer space body count" movie, one in which cool actors like Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams, Liev Schreiber, and Romola Garai get to do all sorts of heroic and desperate things while trying to keep one step ahead of a full-blown invasion of Bio-Martian Madness. (Some may see "space zombies" once 'The Last Days of Mars' gets rolling, but they're more like the furious "rage" victims of 28 Days/Weeks Later. Either way, they're freaky, insane, and very dangerous.

Review Courtesy: http://www.fearnet.com

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