By Brian Viner
Published: 09:15, 11 April 2014 | Updated: 09:15, 11 April 2014
Verdict: A space oddity
Rating: 
The Last Days On Mars does a pretty good job of evoking the real thing: there is so much reddish dust about that this could only be Mars, or possibly the South-East of England after a Saharan sand storm.
With a fraction of the budget enjoyed by Gravity's Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron, debutant Ruairi Robinson has done a fine job.
But this is an odd film, which for its first third develops quite promisingly as a standard space procedural, only to be abruptly invaded by zombies, ending up as an inter-planetary Night Of The Living Dead.
A space oddity: The Last Days On Mars is a bizarre combination of premises
The premise is that this is the last few hours of the first manned mission to Mars, and if that is perfectly credible, I didn't buy for a second the idea that such an enterprise might be a joint-venture between the U.S. and the UK.
I'm quite sure they won't want to share the credit with us, when the time comes.
Still, this at least yields some top British acting talent among the astronauts, including Romola Garai as the likeable Lane, and Olivia Williams as prickly, insensitive Kim (admirably, this mission has room for both genders, as well as all nationalities).
Kim is a difficult character, constantly upsetting the zero-gravity applecart, and I was enjoying the political tension within the crew when suddenly one of them returns from an ill-fated walkabout having been infected by a bacterial life-form, turning him into a monstrous killer.
The rest of the picture unfolds more or less as a zombie shock-fest, although there is nothing more shocking than a revelation about the second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, which I'll leave you to find out for yourself.
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