The Last Days On Mars (2013)
TOMATOMETER
Critics Consensus: Neither intelligent enough to work as thought-provoking sci-fi nor trashy enough to provide B-movie thrills, The Last Days on Mars proves as cinematically barren as the titular planet.
Critics Consensus: Neither intelligent enough to work as thought-provoking sci-fi nor trashy enough to provide B-movie thrills, The Last Days on Mars proves as cinematically barren as the titular planet.
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Movie Info
On the last day of the first manned mission to Mars, a crew member of Tantalus Base believes he has made an astounding discovery - fossilized evidence of bacterial life. Unwilling to let the relief crew claim all the glory, he disobeys orders to pack up and goes out on an unauthorized expedition to collect further samples. But a routine excavation turns to disaster when the porous ground collapses, and he falls into a deep crevice and near certain death. His devastated colleagues attempt to … More- Rating:
- R (for violence and language)
- Genre:
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Directed By:
- Ruairi Robinson
- Written By:
- Sydney J. Bounds , Clive Dawson
- In Theaters:
- Dec 6, 2013 Limited
- On DVD:
- Mar 4, 2014
- US Box Office:
- $23.8k
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Cast
-
Liev Schreiber
as Vincent Campbell -
Romola Garai
as Rebecca Lane -
Elias Koteas
as Charles Brunel -
Olivia Williams
as Kim Aldrich -
Johnny Harris
as Robert Irwin -
Goran Kostic
as Marko Petrovic
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– Rotten Tomatoes
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LoginCritic Reviews for The Last Days On Mars
All Critics (55) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (44)
Alas, the film quickly loses its offbeat charm and devolves into a routine monster movie.
Appealing as that might sound to the walking-dead obsessed, this modest, low-budget sci-fi thriller is fatally lacking in entertainment value.
In the ways that "The Last Days on Mars" is like a horror movies, it's typical, and in the ways it's different, it's mostly flat.
"The Last Days on Mars" seems like it could deliver ... thought-provoking goods - at least until the plot devolves into Zombies in Outer Space.
[A] low-budget, highly predictable, but well-acted Red Planet thriller ...
The acting is convincing across the board, especially Schrieber's, despite being saddled with such dialogue inanities as saying "you're gonna be all right" to a crewmate who is zombifying before his very eyes.
From the get-go, Last Days on Mars looks like a film which the parties involved put about half their effort and care into.
Once danger presents itself and the screaming starts, it all becomes a basic space horror film that plucks tropes from the peg and rarely does anything interesting with them.
Our band of estimable actors have to contend with a storm of B-movie dialogue and the remorseless hammer blows of a stock horror plot line.
Consistently solid acting, smart direction and striking imagery cannot overcome a hackneyed storyline that cobbles together stale ideas and scenarios to a fittingly alienating effect.
This sci-fi drama begins promisingly but loses its way in the Martian dust.
Even at 98 minutes, the whole thing lasts way too long.
Solid but derivative space horror ...
An elegantly crafted adventure in classical science-fiction.
You've never seen the red planet looking quite as humdrum as the one in The Last Days on Mars.
This is an intelligent and engaging sci-fi thriller that's well worth checking out. Also, did we mention the space zombies?
Manages to break free from its low-budget limitations but is hamstrung by its own love of the genre.
A sci-fi horror dimmer than the dark side of the moon.
Escapist sci-fi meets horror hybrid...
Nothing here that hasn't been done better before.
movies with "Mars" in the title tend to suck
... fairly elemental sci-fier from UK that, during its creepier moments, will remind genre buffs of Hammer's top-drawer Quatermass series.
Olivia Williams further enforces the theory, as demonstrated in 'The Ghost Writer' and 'Hyde Park On Hudson,' that there's no one right now more electric at playing royally pissed-off.
Audience Reviews for The Last Days On Mars
Super Reviewer
The search for life is about to end.
Good movie! This movie had a shot at being quite good, only made it to pretty good. Performances were good, but the story went from scientific to space horror a tad too quickly. It's a decent watch and only killed about 98 minutes, so you won't find it to be a total waste of time. If you watch it with the thoughts of real early science fiction, you can see how it fit into the genre. Take the time, enjoy the ride and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, but not overwhelmed.
A group of astronaut explorers succumb one by one to a mysterious and terrifying force while collecting specimens on Mars.
Super Reviewer
This Irish, British and US co-production presented as science fiction thriller was directed by Ruairķ Robinson with a screenplay by Clive Dawson, based on the short story "The Animators" by Sydney J. Bounds. Filming mainly took place in Jordan. Its small cast stars Liev Schreiber, Elias Koteas, Romola Garai, Goran Kostic, Johnny Harris, Tom Cullen, Yusra Warsama and Olivia Williams. There were no outstanding performances but all of them where pretty solid!
The story of a research crew of eight inhabiting the Tantalus Base outpost on Mars was interesting but not developed in details. We witnessed the events in the last 19 hours of the six month mission which was to finish with a rendezvous with the lander Aurora, which will return them to their main orbiting craft. Nothing special was happening until the scientist Marko Petrovic (Goran Kosti?) found some samples that may point to life on the planet. Crewmate Richard Harrington (Tom Cullen) drives Petrovic, in a solar powered rover, to the spot where he had found the sample... and the tragedy strikes!
The movie was engaging enough to create continuity of the story without creating a major drama! There are moments at the start of Ruairi Robinson's feature-length directorial debut that seemed promising... especially a spectacular footage of dust storms and an eerie strings-heavy soundtrack that creates an effective atmosphere of doom. "The Last Days on Mars" was never going to be "Gravity," but it looked like it could aspire to be something closer to the highly enjoyable found footage film "Europa Report." However, the final result was a zombie type action movie which change the whole atmosphere!
Super Reviewer
Probably the weakest film I have seen Liev Schreiber in to date. Weirdly enough, he is asked to carry the load of the film as the star actor, but what is written for him resembles more of a tragic and murky wuss. There's nothing in the plot that makes you feel for any of the characters, but what could have been a very cool concept of a zombie-like bacteria in space killing off members of the crew turns into an unexplainable lifeless horror romp. And it's not scary. The production value is easily comparable to something you'd see in a TV movie, but that's not to say they didn't at least try with some of the vehicles and space station setups. The whole time I was thinking of other science fiction space exploration movies that were just handfuls better than this.
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