Horrifying sci-fi flick not for faint-hearted

Please excuse me as I add “shock an alien lifeform to see if it moves” to my growing list of things never to do in a horror movie (or anywhere else).
“Life” is a horror/science fiction thriller film directed by Daniel Espinosa that was released in late March. A six-person crew aboard the International Space Station successfully intercepts a probe containing samples of Martian soil. Within these soil samples, biologist Hugh Derry, played by Ariyon Bakare, isolates a single cell of alien life, which he quarantines and gradually nurtures into a seemingly harmless, squid-like creature.
The winners of a contest back on Earth name the alien “Calvin”, and for a time, the crew is content to watch Calvin mature and evolve in the safety of its containment box. System engineer Sho Murakami, played by Hiroyuki Sanada, watches the birth of his daughter by video chat, confident that he will soon see her in person. On the opposite end of the spectrum, David Jordan, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, confides in a crewmate that he has lost all desire to return to Earth. They and the other crewmembers—crew commander Katerina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya); pilot Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds); and quarantine officer Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson)—watch as Derry works with and studies the alien lifeform, unsure of what might happen next.
One day, Calvin falls into a state of hibernation. Derry administers electric shocks to awaken it, only to discover that Calvin is not a morning “person,” and that it now considers the crew to be a threat and their space station to be a ticket to the resource-rich Earth below. A horrifying and gruesome battle ensues as Calvin shows its true strength and intelligence and the crewmembers struggle to protect both themselves and the planet they call home.
All comparisons to the “Alien” movie franchise aside, I found “Life” to be frightening and intriguing. The movie is fast-paced and combines elements of space exploration with those of a gruesome monster movie. Since I’m a person who likes both science fiction and horror movies, I couldn’t help but enjoy a film that combines them both. The special effects were convincing enough, though Calvin did look a bit like a gooey space starfish before he graduated to being a terrifying space tentacle…thing.
Three of the six main characters were, in my opinion, a bit forgettable, with scenes of them being maimed or tormented in some way being the only things I really remember about them. That being said, they all still managed to contribute to the plot, and even though I knew very little about half of the crew, I still managed to find the scenes where they were endangered to be suspenseful. I was duly horrified by how they fared during the scenes where Calvin exhibited its poor social skills and inability to play well with others (to put it mildly).
I’d recommend this movie to non-squeamish fans of science fiction and/or horror films.