2 out of 5

Director: Ruairi Robinson

Taken as a low budget thriller, ‘The Last Days on Mars’ accomplishes some respectable visual feats, matching the sheen of director Robinson’s short films, notably ‘BlinkyTM,’ which is what brought his name to my attention.  However, beyond the Mars landscape and Rover sets, the film seems to lack an awareness of how modern horror or thrillers work, and substitutes a blinding environment of darkness and storms as a visual cover to, presumably, increase tension… but it instead it just makes the visuals too dark or too blurry.  What’s especially a shame about this is is that the first few minutes – post your generic ‘computer types mission parameters’ intro screen – the first few minutes are great.  Really great, actually.  They evoke the perfect sense of quiet and slow, creeping potential via an oncoming sand / dust / whatever storm as Liev Schreiber’s land terrain vehicle puts along back toward base.  He and his driver-mate, Rebecca (Romola Garai) have the perfect balance of familiarity and business banter, and the resident curmudgeon, Kim (Olivia Williams), on-site collecting samples, is immediately relatable – though curt and crass in her expression of it – in her frustrations at lack of time to complete her research.  We flash to the base, which is sleepily recovering from a power outage, and here, again, Ruairi shows an excellent sense of patience, letting the whole scene come awake with blinking lights, our interestingly diminutive captain (Elias Koteas) reestablishing communication with the off-planet hub to which they’re all scheduled to return before the power drops out once again, plunging the station into darkness.

This is all magnificent.  The color tones – I appreciate that we didn’t go with a typical space ‘pure’ white but instead a slightly-off one that stands out from but works well with our reddish exteriors – feel lush but real, the slow pan of the scenes and paced movements of the characters sets a proper mood, and Max Richter’s subtle score hits just the right (womp) notes.  But then… it all just falls apart.  One of the research scientists looks into a microscope with a funny smile, then approaches the captain with what sounds like an obvious b.s. reason to leave the base when they’re about to lockdown for the night.  We don’t know what’s coming, but we know that he is what causes it, and we can pretty much pick out the beats from there one by one.  The ‘what’ turns out to be a bacterial infection that zombifies everyone… somehow.  The script doesn’t do anything with the characters it began to establish, and Ruairi gets completely lost when having to capture action, reverting to early 00s shaky cam mode.  This, plus the visual-abandoning darkness and clouds that obscure, honestly, the majority of the scenes from about an hour on, pretty much remove any chance of tension and minute by minute dismisses the interest that was built in the opening.

Still, the acting is solid all around – so Robinson seems to have control of his cast – and there are some interesting scripting elements.  The scientists respond to events mostly like scientists, not making many dumb horror movie decisions.  They might not know much about the infection, but they see and understand the effects pretty immediately and respond in kind.  There’s no debate about how to stop it or what caused it; it’s get away and quarantine.  There’s also quite a bit left vague.  The ending is ambiguous; Liev is haunted by dreams which are never fully explained.  The vagueness also touches the ‘how’ of the virus spreading, which is where the plus/minus of the technique gets a little wishy-washy.  I’m in favor of not over-American-ing movies and not explaining everything, but trying to piece together some basic rules for how this thing passes to different hosts proved difficult.  Blood…. exposed to air?  I’m sure there’s a scientific basis written between the lines, but based on what we see, it doesn’t gel with typical movie rules, so I wouldn’t have scoffed at an extra hint.

A completely generic space thriller that certainly could’ve been elevated into something interesting if director Robinson was as capable of shooting sensible action sequences as he was with the slow and moody opening.  Alas, it wasn’t to be, so we get some seeds of good ideas that grow into an unimpressive flick.