Extinction

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.

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.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this film. Pretty much everyone is tired of the zombie genre by now but no one seems to be doing much to try and change up the formula.

Enter "Extinction", where the main story focus is on the relationship between the two main male leads. After a brief intro scene setting the zombie apocalypse stage, we are sent years into the future and the two men, though living next door to one another in their survivalist enclave, have nothing to do with each other. What has happened in the intervening time to drive them apart? Well, we learn that during the course of the movie, naturally, but it was nice to see that, although there are zombies in the movie, they aren't the focus of the story, merely the backdrop.

This type of movie works really well. The mystery surrounding the two men's falling out and the relationship with the little girl keep you guessing for a while. Of course, the "twist" isn't so wild or subtle that you don't guess it really early on, but it is nice, nonetheless.

The zombies, of course, though absent from much of the film, reappear at length, and we are treated to some nice moments of film making that put me in mind of older films. There is suspense and some nice moments of tension until they are finally revealed but there are a few too many jump scares.

Ultimately, the human drama enhances what would otherwise be a boring zombie movie and makes it into a very decent film indeed. The two main actors involved, Matthew Fox and Jeffrey Donovan, handle their roles very well and give very good performances.

That said, if you prefer your zombies slow and shambling, or your zombie flicks to be fast paced and violent, then this one may not be for you. On the other hand, if you want to try something a little bit different in the zombie apocalypse, then give it a go.

SUMMARY: More human drama than zombie-fest, though there are plenty of them towards the end. Well worthwhile if you want something more than "Pew-pew-pew! Die Zombie Die!" to watch.

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.

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.