I’d put off watching LIFE (2017, streaming on Netflix) as I hadn’t heard much good about it and it seemed an updated Hollywood spin on ALIEN. Despite both being true, I enjoyed it quite a bit and recommend it for sci-fi and horror fans looking for something engaging and punchy in familiar territory.

The film opens with a probe returning from Mars with soil samples, which is caught by the International Space Station with its six-person crew played by solid actors like Jake Gyllenhaal (of course playing a somewhat melancholy earnest guy) and Ryan Reynolds (of course playing a wisecracking astronaut). They find an organism in the soil, which they nurture and experiment with, fascinated by its ability to adapt, grow, and learn. Predictably, it breaks out of the lab, threatens everybody on the station, and poses a threat to Earth.

As far as horror and action go, it’s all pretty solid and follows a familiar path if you’ve ever seen ALIEN. It doesn’t make you jump in your seat, but it’s fun. The ending is an easy guess but nicely done as it took some courage to go there. Where the film shined for me is in its world building.

The space station is very well crafted. It lacks the lived-in grunge of ALIEN’S NOSTROMO but makes you feel like they really shot it in the space station. But that’s not the best part. I love sci-fi films where a space station, planet, spaceship, whatever offers a sandbox for the characters to face challenges and then solve their problems using the available tools. While I may not be surprised that little critter will escape and kill people, I can be surprised with the little problems and solutions the characters face and come up with due to their unique environment.

Besides that, I liked how the writers didn’t try to snare me with international rivalries or contrived conflicts between the characters. They’re all happy to be up there, they work together well, and they’re bonded by their joint mission to explore. They all behave somewhat realistically under stress, and nobody does anything stupid purely to advance the plot. The storytelling is sparse but also very tight and focused.

As for the monster, it’s pretty cool, though not as cool as other, far more creepier and menacing space monsters in other films. Still, it comes across as somewhat believable.

So overall, for me, LIFE only suffers in its comparison to its horror ancestry. Taken by itself, it’s a solid survival horror flick and sci-fi thriller.

In UNTHINKABLE (2018, Netflix), a Swedish thriller disaster film, a dysfunctional family splits apart and rediscovers each other during an invasion by a mysterious power. The action is surprising, realistic, and packs a ton of punch, though the film is dragged down a bit by the main protagonist, who is sympathetic but kinda unlikable.

In 2005, a teenager named Alex lives with his mother and Björn, a retired soldier prone to conspiracy theories about the Russians. Björn suffers from deep anger and paranoia, which he lacks the control to prevent from spilling onto his family. Alex’s best friend Anna, whom he’s in love with, is about to move away from the village. At Christmas, Björn goes too far, driving his wife away, and then Alex leaves too, showing signs he too now has a deep anger that threatens his ability to show or receive love.

Fast forward some years, and an adult Alex is on his way back to his village to buy something valuable to him. Along the way, a series of disasters builds, threatening Sweden’s government and much of its population. Clearly, this is a massive terrorist operation, but who is doing it, and why? The disaster forces Alex to reconnect with the people he left behind, and each of them will find resolution if not ultimate happiness in the horror.

The film is gritty in its realism, with plenty of wow moments in the violent bursts of action. Once things really get going, there is an overwhelming sense of doom, stripping the characters to the moral and psychological bone. The war itself is fascinating, depicting a large-scale sabotage operation to defeat a foreign power without actually invading it. The film is dark right to the end, though each of its characters finds a small bit of redemption for their mistakes.

Overall, I really liked this one and recommend it for those looking for something engaging and off-kilter in an apocalyptic or disaster/war film.

LOVE + MONSTERS (2020, streaming on Netflix) is a slightly rote but fairly fun and warm take on the apocalypse. In the film, a boy and his dog travel across an America swarming with monsters to see his high school girlfriend living in another bunker. Along the way, he discovers the courage to accept the risks of his new life and live it to the fullest instead of hiding. Nothing mind blowing here, just a couple of hours of good fun. I liked it.

The movie starts seven years after chemicals turn the world’s cold-blooded creatures–insects and amphibians–into giant monsters that eat most of humanity. Joel lives in a bunker with other survivors, only he’s not very useful, as he freezes under stress. He recently rediscovered his high school girlfriend living in another bunker (by short-wave radio), and decides to confront his fears and make the overland journey to see her. Along the way, he has various adventures that lead him to discover the courage not only to confront his fears, but completely let go of the past and live this new dangerous life to the fullest.

LOVE + MONSTERS complements its genre rather than transcends or even leads it, but it’s a solid watch. The cast is very likeable, the pace fairly keeps the story moving, the monsters are great and lead to some solid action sequences, there’s a dog in the film who deserves an Oscar, and the theme is strong and communicated well. Joel comes across as a bit overplayed, but not too much to be truly annoying. The conclusion of his journey surprised me a little with its realistic outcome that directly tied to the theme of starting over. On the downside, it beggared belief he survived the journey, the guy is blessed with a stupendous amount of plot armor even for a Hollywood movie.

Anyway, I liked it enough, it was fun.

SHE DIES TOMORROW (2020, streaming on Amazon Prime) rolls out as an art house freakout over existential crisis. It’s intriguing, experiential, and interesting, though its slow, almost meditative pace and lack of a payoff may put off some viewers. This is one of those films that scores really high with critics but really low with audiences. Me, I liked it for what it offered.

The film certainly has an intriguing premise. A woman comes home despondent and displaying flip-flopping emotions. It turns out she believes she’s going to die tomorrow. When she tells a friend, her friend becomes similarly obsessed with the belief, which then spreads like a contagion through her entire network of friends and then the city at large.

The film was inspired by its maker’s experiences with anxiety attacks, and so some have interpreted the film to be about mental illness. That’s fair, though I don’t think you need to be mentally ill to regard death as scary and sudden awareness of your mortality as being a terrifying experience. In a way, the contagion is just that, simple death awareness, though its poignancy and threat comes from it happening regardless of your age and with utter certainty you have only one day to live. Anxiety attack, indeed.

What I enjoyed about the film is its raw honesty about human emotions regarding death. Some wrap up unfinished business like overdue breakups, others try to do something constructive, most become filled with regret over the things that previously obsessed them, though they can’t really imagine having done things all that differently; they just thought they had more time. For them, death robs any enjoyment they might feel in their final moments to the point of impotency and rejection of others; they’re in full animal fight or flight mode. This is not like one of those bittersweet apocalyptic films where the asteroid is coming so the bad guys go nuts, the good guys live life to the fullest, they talk about how they wished they’d climbed Mount Everest when they had the chance, and so on. This is real, stunned regret. The film didn’t need to be any more than that, it’s tough enough, and it qualified for me as psychological horror.

So I liked it for that alone. The acting is good thanks to a nice collection of solid actors, and there’s a certain art to the film, but yeah, you just have to connect with the concept and be willing to engage. On the downside, it’s real slow, very little happens, and we don’t quite get a payoff at the end, no definitive answers. So caveat emptor, YMMV, and all that. It’s certainly not for everybody or even most people. But if you’re in the mood for something deep and oddly affecting, you might check it out.