Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles

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

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.

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.

I don't know what to say about this atrocity of a film. It's basically one guy in the midst of a zombie apocalypse who then stumbles into survivors. One just happens to be a born leader, another a nurse, another one a C.I.A agent, and one's a scientist yada yada yaa. We then get loads of dull boring dialogue and wouldn't you know it, The group are trimmed down just enough so that all of the survivors end up paired off with each other (Yawn) Add to this some very basic make up effects, poor acting and a pace that your average garden snail would leave in a cloud of dust and you have Extinction. One nice twist is that the zombies do mutate in this film and evolve, which I thought was a nice idea. However, when it's as poorly executed as this the nice idea is killed off. I mean, I can accept the fact that the zombies mutate into black faced devil type creatures but I can't for one minute buy the fact that their clothes evolve into jogging pants and hoodies at the same time. Dreadful film!

This isn't a great movie, I thought there was a bit of promise very early on but I was very wrong. There are occasionally some neat seedlings of ideas but they seem to be passed over and instead the main protagonists do idiotic things to endanger themselves and others.

As to the title of this review, I nearly spat out my cereal when I first saw them, just hilarious, oh and very pointless. This film would've been much better if it didn't try to break away from zombie convention, the addition of the other breeds is so badly thought out, explained and executed that I really can't see the point. I've seen high rated reviews of this film on IMDb, those people should seek serious medical help straight away.