The Last Days On Mars – 2013
Magnet, the same film distributor that brought Europa Report
to the U.S., again brings this film to us on a limited release. I checked on Amazon and found that I could
rent this for $7 and thought I would pop for it. It wasn’t worth that in my estimation.
A crew of eight scientist/astronauts are finishing up their expedition
on the Red Planet and are making ready to get back to earth on their Aurora
transport ship. They are all tired and
starting to get on each other’s nerves and are looking forward to going home. One of the scientists, Petrovic, has
discovered that there is something that looks like it may have been alive on
Mars. He doesn’t reveal this to his crew
mates presumably because he wants to get the credit for his discovery. Against the wishes of the others, he decides
to make one last trip to gather more samples.
While taking a core sample, the ground underneath him collapses and he
falls into a deep fissure and is presumed dead.
The commander of the crew, Brunel and rover driver Dalby
head out to retrieve Petrovic and realize they are going to need equipment to get
their ill-fated crew member. Brunel
leaves Dalby at the site and disappears before the rest of the crew
returns. Campbell volunteers to descend
into the fissure to retrieve Petrovic’s body, but there’s no body to be found,
but instead he discovers that there is indeed some sort of life present, and it
is growing.
The crew returns to their habitat and are immediately attacked
by two humanoids that we soon learn are Petrovic and Dalby turned into…
Wait for it…
Zombies. Yes, now we
have zombies on Mars.
Commander Brunel is one of the first to be attacked, with a rock hammer. He of course becomes
infected and begins to become zombified.
Since the habitat has been taken over by Petrovic and Dalby, the rest of
the crew moves Brunel into the hydroponic structure and tries to help
Brunel. They take a blood sample and
determine that a bacterium is responsible for the problem and might be treated
with antibiotics. While the antibiotics
seem to work for a while, they are ineffective as a cure.
So one by one, every member of the crew is zombified with
the exception of one Campbell. He
manages to escape, but discovers a small cut on his face. Figuring he has been likewise infected, he
decides that he will plunge the ascent vehicle into the Martian atmosphere
rather than take a chance of bringing the infection back to earth.
So thanks to Campbell, the Zombie Apocalypse is avoided,
this time.
I am not a huge fan of horror films, and am not a fan of
zombie films. I am therefore not a huge
fan of this film. While I do not care
for this movie, it is not without some good points.
The acting and direction is quite good. One could see that the people on the
expedition were ready to leave Mars after their six-month sojourn away from
earth, and were ready to come home.
Where this movie suffers is in the story and script. It wasn’t strong enough to be a great film,
and wasn’t quite corny enough to be a ‘B’ movie, so sadly it just kind of falls
flat. The location chosen for the
filming was convincing enough to be a Martian landscape, and the vehicles as
well as the sets were well thought out and constructed. In all aspects outside of the story, this was
a decent film. I would have liked to see
a bit more character development, especially for Campbell. There were really no strong characters in
this film; even Campbell didn’t stand out as a person with much strength, which
is too bad because this film really needed a strong character to take on the
lead. It could have been done better.
Well, there it is…
QaplaH’!
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