It’s the year 2242 and Bruce Willis is still an ageing tough guy who’s kicking butt. That’s the alarming prospect raised by this ropey low-budget sci-fi set aboard a spacecraft carrying 300,000 people from dying Earth to life on a new planet. The plot centres on a parasitic alien chomping its way through the crew hired to keep the vessel ticking over while the passengers cryogenically sleep out the six-month journey. And the film-makers, having borrowed the storyline from Alien, also go for the same blue-collar, boilersuit-wearing, truckers-in-space realism. Willis growls a few lines, half-arses a catchphrase or two and points a gun.
The film’s actual lead character is played by Cody Kearsley: Noah, a janitor on this spacecraft, which is the last to leave Earth for the new colony. His heavily pregnant girlfriend is a passenger. (Weirdly, no one seems worried about cryogenically deep-freezing her unborn baby.) Willis plays his hard-drinking boss Clay, though it’s a stretch to call what he does here acting. Security on board is tight following bomb threats from rebels who believe that, having screwed up one planet, humanity don’t deserve another spin of the wheel. It’s a briefly interesting idea, this group of militants trying to stop the spread of parasite humans into outer space, but instead Anti-Life feeds off sci-fi movies past.
Enter an alien organism that first appears on screen as a glistening blur accompanied by scuttering on the soundtrack. I’m not sure if it’s still possible after so many Alien copycats to make the spectacle of an alien lifeform exploding out of a human host genuinely scary – and definitely not with the silly effects here. It’s called Anti-Life but it’s definitely not pro film.
• Available from 12 February on digital platforms.
