#the last days on mars
Review: The Last Days On Mars
For me at least, this film came entirely out of nowhere, which, considering how much I follow horror news, shows up an appalling marketing campaign for what turns out to be a fun and thrilling film.
Last Days has a simple premise. A team of scientists have spent six months on Mars looking for signs of life, and have turned up nothing. They are set to return to Earth, with just one day of their expedition left, when an important sensor breaks and one of the scientists goes out last minute to fix it. Of course it turns out he was hiding a discovery - he found a living bacteria, and this being a horror thriller, that can only be a bad thing. Naturally he becomes infected and the film becomes a race against time, zombie survival film. It’s not massively original and the plot is pretty much the ‘get off the planet as fast as possible’ variety.
What sets this film apart is that not only does it have a few great actors thrown in (Liev Schreiber, Olivia Williams), it uses its setting extremely well. The planet these characters are on is just as dangerous as the infected scientists. The constant struggle for power, for oxygen, the fear of tearing their space suits, not to mention the powerful sand storms, all adds up to a film that constantly leaves you on edge. It’s thrilling and exciting despite its standard premise.
Ultimately,Last Days is not going to shake the world up much, and evidently its distributors had little faith in it given the almost non existent marketing it received, but this is a real shame. This is a fun, exciting film that most horror/thriller fans will lap up on a Friday night. It’s not really scary, which is a shame because it definitely could have been, but it will still keep you on the edge of your seat until the end. Give it a shot.
Overall Rating:8/10
Post link
