Extinction

I just finished watching this film, fair enough it is you average run of the mill type. I however enjoyed the movie, I would say watch it and make your own mind up. The effects were good and the acting to, CGI was excellent not tacky low budget. I have seen far worse in the past, however this film is not one of them. I would watch it again, so saying that says something. If your expecting scares, jumps etc, whilst there are a few, it is very drawn out, the story gets you involved with the characters which is good, If I have to say this film sort of reminds me of legend with will smith, no doubt some people will not like it but hey better than watching paint dry.

Chances are Extinction will remind audience to other zombie or survival movies, such as I Am Legend or even The Walking Dead television series. It uses many familiar elements in this already packed subgenre and honestly it doesn't boast that high of production value. The saving grace is its human drama, which may not be perfect, but acted and crafted fine enough to present a solid survival story.

Patrick (Matthew Fox) and Jack (Jeffrey Donovan) are two neighbors surviving in cold wasteland. Both of them had unusual past which eventually drifted them apart, but they now must reconcile to protect a child from escalating threat. The pace is shifted from present to past regularly to showcase their backstories while the story moves forward.

This method does set some nice character developments, furthermore the actors are definitely capable enough to make it work, seeing that the runtime of nearly two hours revolve around them. It does feel a bit slow at times since the angst and redemption theme are repeated frequently. The movie tries to deliver a few twists, these might not be outright predictable, but not exactly strong and occasionally reaching too far to produce emotional tone.

Actual zombie assault takes much less portion of the movie than the drama, yet it is still made pretty well. Design and effects look better than most of smaller budget flicks. It won't look cheap or campy when the action starts, but it does tend to follow overused path of bald white creature and its quirky antics.

The effort put to personal story and action survival might not suffice to rise above the horde, but it doesn't go to waste since Extinction, despite its flaws, is adequate for a survival tale.

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.

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.