The Last Days on Mars (2013)

Liev Schreiber is the nominal star of The Last Days of Mars. Some of the crew in a martian base come across some bacteria which turns them into zombies and re-animates them.They return to the base and attack the others eventually turning them into zombies. The survivors need to get off the red planet.This is a low budget film that is rather derivative. John Carpenter did it marginally better with a bigger budget in Ghosts of Mars. George Romero made better zombies films with a lower budget.You just watch this in amazement as to how stupid the crew behave. People come to life and the crew does not know how to get rid of them. People get infected and the crew thinks they will stay dead. It is awful stuff.

The Last Days On Mars Hulu This film shines in what it doesn't say. Everyone says this is too familiar and has nothing new, but I strongly disagree. While it does build on great past sci fi films, it puts an Earthly plot (zombies essentially) on a foreign planet. It's most definitely not just a monster movie (though it also takes cues from some great ones). It is definitively sci fi, snuggly fitting with the classics (2001: A Space Odyssey, Event Horizon, even Interstellar, though technically that came after, plus the various Mars movies), although it is a more subtle type, destined to be under appreciated because of its willingness to leave so many plot points open. Like great sci fi (stress in the fi), it has a lot of unexplained phenomena that it recognizes wholeheartedly (how can they be moving if their brain isn't functioning?), but it is compelling enough for you to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride. Also, don't expect a clean ending. Good sci fi will leave you with an open mind - and that is why this is so good, but also less popular. Unfortunately, most general audiences prefer to be coached down to every detail and meaning in art. Come on people. Have a bit of imagination. Frankly, I do sometimes like movies that dumb everything down, or especially movies that make logical sense down to the very last detail, but I also appreciate something different, some variety. And I would say that this film delivered on both levels - we pretty much know what is going to happen in the end, without having to actually see it. It leaves that unsettled feeling that is also somehow comforting.

NB: This review contains some spoilers if you haven't watched the film already (however it is so bad on its own it probably wont affect your enjoyment)It is a novel idea to make a horror movie without any jump scares in it at all (if there were any, I must have missed them). I think the director was going for building a tense suspenseful atmosphere, will the crew survive? Oh no, I care for these characters I don't want them to...The problem is that most of the characters are portrayed as self-centered asses from the very beginning and those that aren't are shallow order following robots.The CGI and interiors are good quality (I think this is where most of the budget went) and the cast for the most part is good (that is where the rest of the budget went). Even the weak plot the film is based on is not that bad if they had tweaked it a bit. The problem is the way the film was shot and cut together. It seems that everyone involved with this film did an excellent job except for the director. There is no real direction to the film and for that the director is ultimately to blame. The film doesn't seem to be trying to be anything in particular. It definitely doesn't achieve trying to be a horror film and suspense is weak.CGI, Interiors and models: Good. Maybe they can sell the assets to someone that can make a good film with themActors: Good. However, they have little opportunity for them to show itDialog: They aren't given enough to work withJump scares: None (that I noticed)Gore: Almost none. Someone decided that it would be a good idea to make infected people not bleed.Action scenes: Weak. Fight scenes mostly involve shoving each other against walls for a few moments and then running away. Nobody ever tries to make a weapon or even look around for anything to defend themselves with.Suspense: Weak. For a long time we don't know what we are meant to be scared of. It is way way in to the film before the risk of infection becomes apparent, but by then you are probably bored and just waiting for the film to end.They could probably have shot this film for a tenth of the budget with unknown actors and it would have been about as good as it turned out. As other reviewers have already said, how did this film ever get made at this budget level in the first place? It's not as if the director had a history of making great films.Final thoughts: The Mars rover looked nice. 'mindless' Zombies that can operate complex machinery and plant explosives, really? If you want to watch a good Mars film, don't watch this one.My score: 3/10. 8 for the CGI, interiors and models. -5 for the rest of the film.

Do NOT watch "The Last Days on Mars," unless you're a 14-year-old boy who likes crude zombie flicks. Otherwise, don't waste an hour and a half of your precious life. The saddest aspect of this film is that they actually put a lot of money and resources into assembling a decent cast with some quality sets, and had real potential to make an intriguing and engaging movie about prospects for human space travel. But instead, they flushed all that down the toilet with a plot that steals rehashed themes from Alien and other real movies, and made the whole thing about zombies. You can't even credibly call this a "sci-fi" movie, because the only fiction is that this movie has anything to do with science fiction. It was physically painful to watch as much as I did before I started skipping ahead and finally quitting it. I hope no one else suffers through this horrible mistake of a film, and I hope all of the humans who actually worked on it learned some serious lessons about how NOT to ruin a prime opportunity to make a good Sci Fi film.