Seeking out the

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The Last Days on Mars

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Directed by Ruairi Robinson
Produced by Andrea Cornwell and Michael Kuhn
Screenplay by Clive Dawson Based on the short story "The Animators" by Sydney J. Bounds
With: Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams, Johnny Harris, Goran Kostic, Tom Cullen, and Yusra Warsama
Cinematography: Robbie Ryan
Editing: Peter Lambert
Music: Max Richter
Runtime: 98 min
Release Date: 19 September 2013
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Color: Color

That fact that The Last Days on Mars is a shameless mash-up of Alien and Night of the Living Dead wouldn’t necessarily sink the picture were it not such an uninspired hybrid. Despite his A-sized budget (for a British picture), director Ruairí Robinson shoots with the clumsy, unimaginative, all-hand-held-close-ups style that almost never serves a film well--certainly not a sci-fi, horror or suspense film. Despite the strong cast, it is often difficult to tell who’s who due to the identical costuming, routine visuals, and hackneyed dialogue. Every time the movie starts to engage us in a potentially suspenseful or creepy way, some character will do something insanely illogical or say a line so dumb it seems to belong in an Ed Wood picture. The Last Days on Mars continues the well-established tradition of bad movies that take place on the Red Planet.