An anemic sci-fi horror nowhere near as profound as it thought it was tries to scrape together a shred of approval

On paper, there was a lot to like about 2013’s The Last Days on Mars, which looked as though it was preparing for existential ruminations on the fate and future of humanity through the eyes of a sci-fi horror story.

The plot is every bit as self-explanatory as it sounds, with the first manned mission to the red planet discovering fossilized evidence of bacterial life. Disregarding direct orders and collecting the samples without approval, it doesn’t take long for things to devolve into outright terror after it transpires the organism they discovered is every bit as dangerous and deadly as it is earth-shattering.

There’s a decent premise and a stacked cast in play, but an 18 percent Rotten Tomatoes score coupled with a 24 percent audience approval rating highlights just how wide of the mark The Last Days on Mars ended up being. It wasn’t as clever, introspective, or thought-provoking as it either thought it was or wanted to be, while even the scares were formulaic and routine.

Time tends to heal most wounds when it comes to lo-fi genre films, especially when they fall into the horror camp, but the fact that not even the most dedicated of Redditors can sum up anything positive to say about director Ruairí Robinson’s half-baked intergalactic escapade says it all.

Few offshoots of a proven artform are as inconsistent as merging sci-fi with slashers, and The Last Days on Mars should at least sleep soundly knowing that it’s far from the first – or last – misfire to orbit the ether of irrelevancy.