Short Attention Span Review - The Last Days On Mars (2013)

In the near future, a team of scientists and engineers discovers bacterial life on Mars. When exposed, the bacteria kills the infected person and reanimates them as violent, slowly disintegrating zombies who try to infect others. Things don't turn out well for our heroes.

Basically, this is Night of the Living Dead on Mars. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The film does have some strong points. The effects work is top-notch and the exteriors (with Jordan filling in for Mars) is sufficiently desolate. The cast is good and no one puts in a bad performance. The film ends on an acceptably bleak note, not unlike a john Carpenter film. And there are a lot of nice little touches, like the mission being partially sponsored by private industry (there are are corporate logos on the various pieces of equipment that seem to be there for advertising purposes) or the lack of a clear view of what the subterranean fungus forest looks like. I also think the decision to make the bacteria like the zombie fungus was a nice one.

However, all is not perfect on the Red Planet.

Space zombie seems sad. Poor space zombie.

The characters are poorly motivated and behave in unbelievable ways. In a traditional zombie/survival horror film, where disparate people are thrown together, you can accept in-fighting, secretiveness, and people basically, behaving in dumb ways that propel the plot. This same behavior on the part of a team of professionals on one of the first Mars missions is silly. And yet, we have a scientist who discovers the bacteria but doesn't tell anyone (he then is the first person infected), another character who has no problem leaving a college to die, for no reason, and the protagonist, engineer Vincent (Liev Schreiber), who apparently suffer from a bout of space madness on the way to Mars and almost killed himself. They are all a huge bundle of cliches and poorly thought out motivations that detract from the film. The life cycle of the bacteria is mostly well thought out, except for a scene near the end where one zombie is eating a victim. That makes no sense given everything we've seen in the film, although it does fit the "zombies need to eat people" trope. Finally, the story really offers nothing new to the zombie genre, except for the setting.

The film is still worth watching. It is an entertaining science-fiction/horror hybrid that looks nice, a good cast - albeit one that is hampered by poorly conceived characters - and a story that breaks no new ground, but also isn't offensively bad. So make some popcorn, grab a beer and check it out.