Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles

The best thing was the poster – should the be the OMG Chronicles, not G.M.O.

There is much you can learn from movies. From this one, you can primarily lean how to make a truly dreadful train wreck of a film. There is so much wrong with it, I do not know where to begin, but I will give it a go:

Acting: When the lead man first appeared I thought the acting was pretty bad, but he shines in comparison with some of the rest of the cast. To be honest, it is not the actors fault. If you take a load of native German TV soap-opera stars and force them to speak "film" English (which is evidently not their mother tongue) you are asking for trouble. And this is what you got - inflection, subtlety and expression go out window as the cast concentrates on pronunciation. At the point where one of the actors died, I was actually delighted as it meant I did not have to watch him anymore (this was probably the biggest emotional kick the film gave me).

Script: Again, written by non-native English speakers and this comes shining through. Looking for milk in a supermarket comments like "get the high-temperature milk" caused titters in the audience. In one scene every line seems to include the protagonist's name. The banal dialog just kept on coming - just listen to the crap the priest spews in the trailer and remember – and that is supposed to be the highlight of the film.

General dross: OK, so you have been trapped in a police cell for 16 days. When the doors open, you are sitting quietly with designer 2 day stubble and inform your rescuers you survived "by drinking water from the bowl and eating toilet paper". The stubble thing really annoyed me, some of the cast were perfectly shaved every day, others had designer stubble, with no running water or electricity you have to question how this feat was achieved. Also watch out of the reaction of the "girls" around the door frame when the new sofa arrives, the film suddenly transforms to a toothpaste commercial.

Props: The "show" opens with the lead actor recording a video diary on an Apple Mac. I want know where is bought is battery. Considering the film supposedly happens over months, this Mac kept on going, unlike most of the audience. The nuclear power-plant explosion is also a classic, with debris thrown across the road, but carefully choreographed so that none of the "abandoned" cars were in any danger of getting scratched. Considering the cars were supposedly left months ago, they looked suspiciously clean as if the crew had just parked them. The genetically mutated enemy bought some comic relief, I suspect they used some leftover costumes from the Planet of the Apes.

A terrible film. But then why the two stars? Well I have to admit it is so bad you have to see it to the end just to see what happens and if it can get any worse. (It can). It is like a train wreck, you have to keep watching despite the horror of the movie - the extra star is for that.

I saw its premiere at the Hof Film Fest in August 2011, it has taken ages to be released, I imagine because it is so bad. Assume it will go straight to DVD - buy it, laugh at with a few mates and then never watch it again.

It is not exactly a 'zombie' movie, since the attackers are rather easily killed, for the most part. And as the movie progresses, they meet more evolved ones, who can move fast and don't have some of the constraints for earlier ones. We follow a small group of survivors who are trying to figure out what is happening. The real problem is that one really doesn't care. The onset is sort of mysterious, apparently from some GMO engineered plant that got out of control and starting taking over the bodies of people, or something like that. As the creatures evolve, it become more and more difficult to defend against them, so the survivors are on the run. And we are following them.

"Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles" isn't exactly a bad movie, but neither is it a really great movie. For a zombie movie, it had an unfortunate tendency of dragging out in long, slow moments, which really weighed heavily on the movie.

Story-wise, then "Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles" is fairly average. A small group of survivors come together in the face of a worldwide threat of extinction as the dead return to life to eat the flesh of the living.

It is the visuals and the cinematography that keeps the movie interesting, but it just barely does so. There are times where the movie just drags on forever and ever without really getting anywhere, and you start to get bored and frustrated with the lack of pace in the movie.

The characters in the movie were somewhat one dimensional and you never really got to get properly acquainted with the characters, as they either had too little time to expand or they were just given poor dialogue and script to work with. And as such, then the characters in the movie came off as generic and uninspiring as a whole.

I watch a lot of zombie movies, and most of them are not brandishing million dollar budgets. "Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles" is actually a good production, but it is just suffering from a poorly executed story and one dimensional characters.

And also for a German produced movie, why were everyone there speaking English? Sure they had that thick, telltale German accent, but still, it would have had a more meaningful punch to the story if they had spoken in German, the nations native language. And there are actually some better German zombie movies available on the market - if you don't mind non-English language movies.

"Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles" had potential, but unfortunately it had things working against it which eventually managed to pull it under water and make the movie less enjoyable. I've seen worse low budget zombie movies, but this movie just ended up being uninspiring, less than interesting and too slow.

Despite the set-up being almost an exact copy of The Walking Dead ( whether this is an coincidence I don't know) I sort of enjoyed this little trip down Zombie Apocalypse lane. The emphasis on the characters rather than the gore was much appreciated, and you're never quite sure who's going to survive till the end... which is good.

I can't quite give it the proverbial thumbs up though, as the zombies are largely laughable creations without an ounce of scare factor... particularly the ones which jump around like Mexican beans near the end. There is also one tough cadaver who appears out of nowhere and seems to be immune to bullets... Explanation, please? None was forthcoming.

And those similarities with a certain brilliant TV show are too numerous to list... They call the undead 'walkers'... One of the main guys is good with a crossbow... they hide out in a secure fenced facility... and the time it takes for you to be infected after bitten is almost the same.

Finally, it was nice for all these German actors to speak English from start to finish in their OWN country so we could understand them. Explanati... Nah, forget it. 5/10

This film isn't perfect, e.g., the shaky camera and dark lighting in some scenes; however, it doesn't deserve a below average rating. I was captivated by it from start to finish. This movie will entertain you, especially if you're a zombie flick fan.