As a crew of Earth astronauts prepare to leave Mars, they are confronted with a bacteria that turns them into the undead. Liev Schrieber plays the Captain of the first group of astronauts to visit Mars and establish a base. Which, based on the last forty years of Hollywood moviemaking, means that he and most of the crew are likely to suffer a horrible and painful death by the hands of some mysterious alien.
Click here to see the rest of this review...
The creature de jour is a mysterious bacteria and it's unleashed when the ship's chief scientist Marko (Goran Kostic) decides to skip the crew's preparations to leave Mars in favor of one last trip on the surface. He's hoping to find an example of a native bacteria and when he stumbles into a fissure and is swallowed up he finds it. Several members of the crew try and find his body in the newly opened cave. But as they explore the cave all they discover is a lot of Mars fungus. And one by one, they become the undead. Their skin turns black and they become super-fast zombie creatures.
The monsters enter the base and the next half hour of the movie involves a lot of fighting as one-by-one the crew is killed and reanimated as a monster. Aside from one particularly gruesome death by power drill, the crew dies in pretty predictable ways. There are several life lessons illustrated, including the fact that while you might enjoy being the crew grouch, you're likely to be the first one left behind in a zombie apocalypse.
Eventually there are only three crew members left alive: Capt. Campbell (Liev Schreiber), scientist Rebecca Lane (Romola Garai) and crewman Robert Irwin (Johnny Harris). The three decide that the only way they can survive is to drive the remaining ship rovers to the site where a ship called Aurora is set to land and replace them. Lane is injured and Irwin argues they should kill her because she's probably infected. Campbell refuses and Irwin steals the fully functioning rover and heads for the landing area. But Irwin is already infected although he's hidden it from Campbell and Lane. They take the slower and less-charged rover and follow but while Lane isn't infected, she is dying from her injuries. She tries to flee and after she dies she reanimates and begs the Captain to kill her. He does and arrives at the landing site just behind Irwin.
Unfortunately for the two men, one of the infected crew is already there and has killed the landing crew of the the Aldrich. Campbell and Irwin kill the zombie crew and Irwin launches the lander into orbit. But he's very obviously a zombie-to-be, so Campbell kills him and ejects his body into space. He then radios the waiting ship and warns them that he might be infected and the safest approach might be for them to let him die. And the movie fades to black.
Best part of story, including ending:
I expected the film to be better than it was. The story was derivative and seems cobbled together from a number of other films and books.
Best scene in story:
I enjoyed the open-ended ending. While those "we'll never know what happened" ending to films usually annoy me, in this case it was very appropriate and fit well with the movie's plot.
Opinion about the main character:
Liev Schreiber is a great actor and while he's slumming a bit in this film, he makes the Captain seem brave and confident without seeming arrogant or reckless. The Captain is by far the most well-rounded character in the film.
