Reviews: Lifeforce (1985) Movie Review
- Related: [ Movie Details for Lifeforce ]
Subgenres: Aliens, Vampires, Sci-Fi, Supernatural Serial killer (Top Supernatural Serial Killers in Movies)
Our take on Lifeforce (1985) explores its plot, scares, and horror highlights to help fans decide if it deserves a place on their watchlist.
In Lifeforce (1985), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Poltergeist (1982), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)) brought us his take on alien space vampires sucking the life force from humans on Earth. Lifeforce had a whopping estimated $25 million budget and is widely known as a filming mess.
Lifeforce introduces us to a great discovery as a few astronauts encounter the last remnants of an alien race. They appear human, but their surroundings seem like a bat cave, strange. A captivating beauty referred to as Space Girl, played by Mathilda May, is the main being. For some reason, the astronauts take the aliens back to their spacecraft. After some events, Dr. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) manages to escape in a life pod, leaving his dead team behind. A rescue space ship intercepts the previous ship and takes it and the space vampires back to Earth. The space vampires drain the life force from everyone they come in contact with making those victims, in turn, become space vampires too.
Lifeforce has a lot going on, and that may be why it was so difficult to create a coherent story, character development, and right tone. This film has a lot of issues, but it tries hard to win you over with the scope, graphics, and plot. The performances from some were good while other actors fell horribly short. I appreciate the beast that Tobe Hooper was trying to tackle and bring to life, and after a rewatch, I appreciate the film a little more, but this is one movie that most viewers will not watch for anything other than the space vampires sucking the life force out of people. I cannot help but like the mythos and difference that this film delivers, to say the least.
Similar films like Lifeforce can be found in vampire movies, vampire movies, monster movies, and monster movies sub-genre(s), check them out for more movies like Lifeforce.
Sources Used to Shape This Review
Insights in this review are drawn from director interviews, fan commentary, production notes, and long-form breakdowns across genre-specific platforms. Content is written uniquely and reviewed for accuracy.
- Lifeforce Rating Scores
- Our Score: 6/10
- Overall Score: 5.76/10
- IMDB: 6.1/10
- MetaCritic: 5.0/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 5.8/10
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