Lifeforce

This is a busy movie. BUSY. A space team finds a derelict ship inside Halley's Comet with a bunch of dessicated bat-like things and three human-looking things inside suspended animation chambers. As one of them is a very cute and very naked woman, one of the astronauts becomes entranced with her, and declares they're taking all three with her. From there, THEIR ship suffers a fire, the escape pod disappears, the humanoids come back, there's a space vampire, psychic powers, psychic body-hopping, a plague, a zombie uprising, and the quarantine of London. Got that? Like I said, it's a busy movie. They threw in everything they possibly could into this movie, and because they did, they left no room for establishing the rules of the space vampires, their powers, or their goals. Space Girl (the naked chick, who -- fair warning -- is full-frontal naked in every scene she's in until the very end, so maybe don't watch this with kids) goes from sucking out people's life force to jumping into the minds of other people -- sometimes multiple -- without any explanation. And then somehow she starts a zombie plague, which makes no sense, as the way it happens was also the way the vampire curse spread, and had a strict time limit before. And then she's stealing not life force, but souls, and it's powering a spaceship?, and it just makes no sense. This plot has 11 elements that do not go together, and the film could not be asked to try. And the moment you pull at the threads with a "yeah, but", the movie will collapse in on itself like a dying star. BUT ... if you avoid that, it is a decent movie. Not great. It's never boring, that's for sure. The two leads do a decent job; the American astronaut is plagued by his psychic connection to Space Girl (yes, that's how she's credited), while the British special ops guy just wants to get this problem fixed. I liked that he didn't start as a Scully, as that would've dragged this out; he just accepts what's going on, because it's right there in front of him. Mathilda May as Space Girl is wonderful casting, as she is supposed to be bewitching and yet haunting and eerie, and she does that well (and would likely do it well without being naked to the level of Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls; she has an angelic face but a devilish smile). The special effects have that 80's cheese, so, you know, adjust expectations. It's a decent little package of a movie that you won't regret watching, provided you do NOT think about what you're watching. Hooptober 2021 movie #8/23.