'The Last Days On Mars' Review: A Tired Tale Of Zombie Apocalypse In Space

The Last Days On Mars is a thriller turned predictable horror flick staring Liev Schreiber and Ramola Garai.

Director Ruairi Robinson was nominated for an Oscar in 2002 for Best Animated Short Film, and The Last Days on Mars marks his feature debut. Perhaps his Oscar nomination explains why such a derivative script would attract such respected actors. Based on a short story, The Last Days on Mars is set in the not too distant future, when the world has sent astronaut scientists to Mars on a fact-finding mission, named Operation Aurora. The film begins on the group’s last day on Mars, in fact, the film begins with a 19 hour countdown until the space craft arrives to take them on the six-month journey home.

The first twenty or so minutes of the film are fascinating. The eight-man crew of scientists is disheartened – they didn’t find what they were looking for: signs of life on Mars. And no one is as put out as the severe Kim Aldrich (Olivia Williams), who is definitely not a team player. The group has already formed its cliques: Marko Petrovic (Goran Kostic) is the flashy bad boy who has allies in Lauren Dalby (Yusra Warsama) and Richard Harrington (Tom Cullen), and Vincent Campbell (Schreiber) has formed a tight friendship with Rebecca Lane (Garai) and Robert Irwin (Johnny Harris). Charles Brunel (Elias Koteas), the captain, is just trying to get a handle on his team’s extreme personalities and competitiveness.

The characters are all incredibly strong and surprisingly well rounded. Every single character had a distinct personality, communicated by as little as two lines. The actors, all fantastic, deliver the dialogue perfectly, giving the viewer a real sense of the characters’ identities. Vincent, the main character, is an American astronaut. Quiet, a bit more reserved than some of the other, more ambitious members of the team, Vincent worries about the return home. ‘What will it be like to return to Earth?’ they all wonder.

The scenes in which the characters are simply talking, expressing their clashing personalities and exploring the possibilities of what their experience living on another planet even means, are by far the best in the film. It’s a shame there are only a few of them. As the real intrigue of the film (monster attack!) unraveled, all I could think was that I would have much rather watched these actors sit around a table and talk for an hour and a half.

As with any good horror film, the astronauts meet their foe when a member decides to do something selfish and stupid: Marko keeps a project hidden from the others and sneaks out of base with Harrington to recover his proof of life on Mars. Of course, his discovery unleashes an alien monster, à la Alien, and suddenly the astronauts find themselves fighting desperately to survive until their spaceship comes to pick them up.

From there, the plot fizzles into a boring retelling of every space monster you've seen before, with a bit of zombie movie thrown in for good measure. Watching the film, one can’t help but recall Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien, perhaps the best, and most well known, space monster film ever created. Everything from the sweeping shots around the space station, to the terrifying trip in the tunnels underneath the station, is reminiscent of the 70s classic. Unfortunately for The Last Days On Mars, Schrieber, no matter how excellent, is no Sigourney Weaver – or, to be fair, Vincent is no Ripley.

What is most frustrating about the film’s tired plot isn’t the fact that we’ve seen it all before. Instead, the truly enraging aspect of the film is how stupid and oblivious the characters are when it comes to a plot the audience knows by heart. In a time when The Walking Dead is all the rage, it’s difficult as an audience member to believe that none of the astronauts on Operation Aurora would have heard of a zombie, or wouldn’t immediately realize that, if one person doesn’t die when they are supposed to, then it’s safe to say everyone that dies will be resurrected. It would be one thing if the film brought up the fact that zombies are fiction and these scientists deal in facts, but it doesn’t, save for an extremely brief squabble between Kim and Robert.

The Last Days on Mars has a lot of potential, and many great moments of filmmaking. The opening scene, for example, featuring a sweet exchange between Garai’s Rebecca and Schreiber’s Vincent, is excellent. And the camera work, especially in long, panning shots of the desert-like planet, is beautiful. But, because this is essentially a zombie flick, all of that talent is lost in the disappointing plot.

Quite honestly – I could have fallen asleep during the film and still have known what happened. It is that predictable and that void of meaning. Needless to say, that’s not the feeling you want to have when leaving the theater. Sure, the stellar cast makes the film somewhat interesting, but even they can’t save the plot from alienating (pun intended) the audience.

The Last Days On Mars is currently available on VOD and iTunes and will hit theaters Dec. 6.

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