One of them goes off in the last hours to get some final samples and discovers a microscopic life form in some soil - a black, fungal-like bacterium. He keeps it secret so he can claim the glory later, but while collecting more samples, he falls into a sinkhole and is killed/infected himself. The bad news for him is that the bacteria is a biological parasite that reanimates dead tissue. Once a crew member dies, the bacteria takes over their motor functions!
At this point, it started to remind me very much of The Thing (1982) which, as we know, is a quite brilliant and fun film too. We now have a race against time in a situation where those going to rescue the fallen do not know the danger they face (because of the secret) and end up getting infected themselves, with the inevitable domino effect as time goes on.
They start to twig what is going on by taking blood samples from those impacted, which becomes tricky as our Martian Zombies are highly aggressive but retain basic intelligence - they are able to use tools and airlocks, for example. They also don’t need air, so they can go outside in the Martian vacuum without suits. One of the clues much leaned on in the narrative is that they get very thirsty at first!
The infection spreads rapidly through scratches and bites, so one by one, the crew is picked off. The question is, can any one (or more) of them avoid getting infected, flee the base in one of their rover vehicles and get to the landing site where the rescue ship (the Aurora landing craft) is inbound? It’s a race against time and contact with the infected. As I say, it is very much The Thing, with splashes of Alien and one of 1,001 zombie films back on planet Earth!
The acting is decent from the main players - Elias Koteas, Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai, Olivia Williams, Johnny Harris, Goran Kostić, Tom Cullen and Yusra Warsama - and the special effects of the Martian landscape and dust storms are pretty convincing, too. Director Ruairi Robinson created quite slow-burn for the first half hour as we get to know the characters (probably in more detail than we need), but it picks up after that, as the action starts, and from then on, it is pretty well-paced.
I’m guessing the film didn't have a huge budget like, for instance, The Martian, but it does well with what it has and the story is somewhat imaginative and fun. Being made 13 years ago, as I write, I think some of the facts about Mars that we know now were not known then, so it is probably best not to pick it apart for detail in that respect. It ends up being a satisfying space/sci-fi/horror flick which I’m sure most people would enjoy for the 1 hour and 38 minute runtime. It’s available on various streaming services in the UK.
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