A scene from The Last Days on Mars.
On the final day of a six-month Mars mission that's yielded nothing by way of life forms but plenty of close-quarter crankiness, an international scientific team – headed by Elias Koteas, and staffed by Liev Schrieber, Romola Garai and Olivia Williams – stumbles upon a virulent bacterial entity that livens up the dullness: One by one, they're transformed into raging homicidal zombie-nauts.
But their excitement is our tedium, as the question of life on Mars is invariably supplanted by the wondering of just who needs another by-the-numbers outer-space riff on Alien, The Thing and the zombie-siege scenario?
Although ably directed by feature first-timer Ruairi Robinson, and gamely performed by a cast professional enough to feign alarm and surprise, The Last Days on Mars ultimately confirms what science has already spent billions of dollars establishing: There's just no life here.
Geoff Pevere