Extinction

At first I thought "Oh no, not another zombie movie!", but from the very first minutes I got hooked. The beginning scene of the film is great and reveals the overall theme of the movie: it is not about why or the how, it's all about the who.

Extinction is rather badly chosen a title, because the scope of the film is not global, but very localized, very human and personal. It feels more like a play, with a total of four roles that are worth mentioning. It is not about a problem that someone solves, but goes back to the core of the zombie genre, the pure survival of the group of individuals in a hostile world. The creatures themselves are very secondary with the focus on the people, with complex and well written characters.

Bottom line: this film deserves a lot more recognition than the IMDb rating seems to indicate. It is not a masterpiece, but certainly a work of art, not another recycled "run, shoot, run" clone. It lasts for two hours and it is a slow paced character driven story. So glad to see well written stories from time to time.

I've been compelled to write this review after reading the former ones. As this film is quite remarkable in many things I can only understand the very bad reviews as spurious stuff. Why I say that comes below: Very good performances. Matthew Fox, Jeffrey Donovan and the girl Quinn McColgan are perfect in their work. You really get into the movie with them. There's always a narrative nerve that never decays. The photography is usually evocative. The characters are elaborated and likely. They evolve as the screenplay unfolds. The movie is, in general, entertaining and the action scenes are well filmed. Maybe is not the most original sci-fi movie but no doubt it's a more than decent one.

Apocalypses come and go ... especially in movie terms. And there are different sort of movies. Those who take upon them to show us how and if an apocalypse is coming. And those who are showing us and concentrate more on the aftermath. This is a case of the latter. But it's also a slow burner.

Do not expect this to be highlight upon highlight, and excitement upon excitement. No this is human drama at its finest. You could argue and wonder if the animosities are real - or rather if there is enough reason for conflict, but humans are hard to figure out. And living isolated does make people do crazy things from time to time ... I wouldn't react like that, I think, but the internal logic of the movie still works. And there is enough tension to keep you on the edge of your seat, once the movie gets going.

I feel like lot's of different movies were used as inspiration for this one. It seems to have taken ideas from lots of places. It's worth a watch but only middle of the road. In the world of zombie type movies it's certainly not the worst one you'll ever see.

As far as the film goes, a tragedy takes place at the beginning of the movie which puts the two men against each other. Now when I first saw the trailer to this flick I knew it wouldn't be a high budget film. So going into the first 1 hr of the film had me a bit worried that it would be full of cheesy special effects. But instead the script writer maintains focus on the two protagonists and the kid, which is a smart way to do a low budget film less gore, less explosions, less cost. I found it to be quite scary at certain points especially when you see a camera turn away from one of the actors you know something is going to pop out behind. Matthew fox does a pretty good job maintaining a strange character with some sort of secret but if you're like me you can piece it together no problem. I really enjoyed the make up designs for the evolved zombies, but it didn't pan out to be as great as I expected. If you dig movies such as the descent or even 30 days of night I'm sure you will find a shed of enjoyment with the film. Don't over sell yourself thinking it is a complete sleeper it will have its moments, but unfortunately a short hand of them.