FILM REVIEW: ANTI-LIFE (DIR. JOHN SUITS)

anti-life

Director(s): John Suits
Writer(s): Edward Drake & Corey Large
Starring: Cody Kearsley, Bruce Willis, Rachel Nichols, Thomas Jane

Anti-Life is an edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller with an (inter)stellar cast starring Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Cody Kearsley (Riverdale) and Thomas Jane (The Mist). Set in the near future, a spaceship flees a devastating plague on planet Earth with a few thousand survivors on board - the last remnants of humanity.  But the ship has a stowaway: a shape-shifting alien whose goal is to slaughter everyone on board. Clay Young (Bruce Willis) and his team are a hardened group of mechanics picked to stay awake and maintain the interstellar ark.

In order to give what we believe to be a more unbiased constructive criticism of the piece, the members of Bloodhound Pix are tackling each review as a panel of three. None of the members know the others’ thoughts on the content until after they submit their initial response.

Initial Reaction to anti-life

C. Alien, Pandorum, The Thing and whatever other movies revolved around crew members facing a foreign lifeforce in a confined and isolated location. I wanted to get it out of the way, because there are moments where they clearly pay homage to other iconic films in that realm, making its connection even more apparent. Lately filmmakers wear their influences on their sleeves which inevitably creates an uphill battle for their films to stand on their own, leaving us as an audience thinking we’d just rather watch the one we already know is good.


Enter Anti-Life (or Breach in the States).


The movie itself is fun and fortunately that’s what it is shooting for, making the obvious homages and some of the flaws more forgiving. It’s technically competent and they make the use of the effects they can based on, what appears to be, a smaller budget. As I believe others will mention and if you’ve seen any recent films of his, it’s great seeing Bruce Willis do more than just coast through a role. He is entertaining, charming and you almost want the movie to be about this older crew on their last trip to new Earth (or 2nd Earth), trying to keep everything functioning while 1000s of people are in cryosleep. However, Cody Kearsley does a decent enough job to be the newbie that gives us the opportunity for other characters to provide exposition dumps and forced stakes (because he’s not supposed to be on the ship and the mother of his child is in cryosleep).


The movie does have points where it tries to add more plot elements than are necessary for unknown reasons, like there are rebels that believe humanity should die on our planet we screwed up instead of finding a new home. It ultimately feels like another add-on to up the stakes and create tension but all it does is add purposeless plot.


At the end of the day it’s a B-action movie that is meant to be enjoyed with friends and junk food or drinks. When Anti-Life/Breach embraces those elements, it’s enjoyable. The moment it takes itself seriously, it becomes convoluted and graces us with long scenes of explanation.


J.  This movie isn’t good… but I fuckin’ loved it!  It’s got my boy, Thomas Jane (although he’s more of a cameo) so that right there moves this one up a notch or two.  It’s a complete rip off of Alien and The Thing and also manages to toss in some zombie shit on top of everything.  Sounds good right?!  Well, the execution is suspect most of the time.  So much so that it reminded me of something Asylum or Uncork’d would do although a little higher quality.  I also can’t remember seeing Bruce Willis awake for a “performance” recently and he seems pretty lucid for most of this one.  His character makes his own moonshine and is consistently drunk throughout the narrative.  Made me wonder if old Bruce himself was imbibing between scenes… to stay in character of course.  Anyway, Alien and The Thing, yes this film has both and doesn’t shy away from either influence, complete with a character uttering the line, “you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”  This film has like a 3.7/10 on IMDB and a 23% Rotten Tomatoes but I say to hell with that.  This is stupid and downright abysmal but it’s a lot of fun.  And Thomas Jane.


K.  Anti-Life is a strange amalgam of sci-fi plots and tropes.  A space freighter is headed to New Earth, aka Earth 2, since we’ve apparently ruined the original Earth with pollution and whatnot (not far from reality) and a ragtag group of misfits are tasked with overseeing the ship’s journey as the upper class passengers lie in luxurious hypersleep.  Among the crew is our protagonist who has impregnated the daughter of the Colonel (Thomas Jane) and has yet to break the news and face the inherent class disparity.  He’s partnered with Clay (Bruce Willis) to maintain the ship, space-mopping and all that fun space-maintenance.  From there it cycles through a million tropes, they release a ethereal cosmic evil that infects the crew members one by one, turning them into zombies and later Thing-like monsters.  So, you have Alien and The Thing ripped off right there.  Which would be fine, if they had added something of their own.


But they don’t.  The crew is largely made up of disposable characters.  The protagonist isn’t very interesting.  Bruce Willis steals all the scenes as a gruff and weary space grunt and seems to be having a hell of a good time.  He should have been our protagonist.  The movie would have been way more fun and enjoyable.  Aside from him, Thomas Jane and Rachel Nichols turn in good performances.  Though again, Thomas Jane is vastly underused.  The cinematography, desaturated color palette and attempts at futuristic production design coalesce into a low budget blandness that doesn’t seem worth the effort.


There’s some fun moments, but they’re overshadowed by dumb characters, filler and a lot of gruff hazing of the protagonist that’s supposed to qualify as conflict but, in fact, isn’t.

Response to Anti-life

C. Is Thomas Jane destined for cameo roles in genre movies anymore? It seems to be the only way we see him. Maybe a decade or two from now he will enter into that stage where his career will be revitalized like Bruce Dern or (pick a Tarantino movie that helped an actor’s career).


But onto the movie itself, it’s exactly what you’d expect from viewing the cover but surprisingly it has a solid build for the first 30 minutes or so. As Josh stated it’s in that vein of Asylum movies (Sharknado, etc.) that are meant to piggyback off of another successful film(s). In that sense it’s fun. However, in the moments it takes itself more seriously or “smart” sci-fi you’ll find yourself looking at your phone and then it’s game over, man.


J. There’s also a scene where the Noah character (Cody Kearsley) has the idea to get up into a vent system in order to get to a different part of the ship (where could this idea possibly have come from?) and he looks at Bruce Willis and says, “where does this vent go?”  And Bruce Willis says, “vents go a lot of places, kid.”  That’s the kind of hilarious shit this film has to offer so just see the damn thing.  Nobody trusts anybody now… and we’re all very tired.




K.  We’ve all acknowledged the influences and faults of Anti-Life, so you know what you’re getting into if you press play on this one.  It’s a bargain bin of B-movie ideas, not without its charms, but not terribly memorable either.  Your move, creep.

Bloodhound’s average score: 2 ½ out of 5

Signature Entertainment presents Anti-Life on Digital Platforms 12th February and DVD 15th February

Bloodhound Pix is made up of: Craig Draheim, Josh Lee, and Kyle Hintz

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