Some space scientists are about to finish a wearisome six-month stint checking for signs of life on the fiery surface of Mars. Exhausted after endless weeks of work, driving their tractor-wheeled vehicles across dusty terrain between the mother ship and the temporary outpost next to the dig site, and waiting for crackly video messages to come through from their nearest and dearest on earth, they're looking forward to getting home. Surely nothing absolutely terrifying can happen to them on the very last day, can it? Screenwriter Clive Dawson and director Ruairí Robinson have put together a smart thriller, based on the 1975 SF short story The Animators by Sydney J Bounds: a neo-zombie nightmare in space, with Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai and Olivia Williams among the jumpsuited crew. Their day-to-day working lives are banal and technocratic in the style of Ridley Scott's Alien or indeed Duncan Jones's Moon, and perhaps inevitably, the film is easily at its most exciting before anything scary happens. The opening act in the fascinatingly surreal landscape of Mars is great. This is the world they have called home. The finale is good, too, although the centre-section with its claustrophobic action-horror sags. Still: an elegantly crafted adventure in classical science-fiction.