Mars, as Elton John once told us, ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. Nor should we attempt to explore it, according to the team behind The Last Days On Mars, which sends a diverse group of astronauts to the Red Planet and discovers something nasty lurking beneath the shifting sands. Check out the trailer for the thriller over at Apple.
On the last day of the first manned mission to Mars, a crewmember on 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 recover his body. However, when another vanishes they start to suspect that the life form they have discovered is not yet dead. As the group begins to fall apart it seems their only hope is the imminent arrival of the relief ship Aurora…
This certainly has a nicely eclectic cast, with Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams, Johnny Harris, Goran Kostic and Tom Cullen all squeezing into spacesuits or jumpsuits for the thriller that comes across as a blend of Mission To Mars (though hopefully not as dodgy), T****he Thing and The Andromeda Strain. Can it compete with the impressive likes of Europa Report and the immensely anticipated Gravity? Although there's no confirmed UK release date yet, we’ll find out soon enough….