{"id":18364,"date":"2016-02-14T00:20:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T05:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=18364"},"modified":"2016-01-03T14:34:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T19:34:00","slug":"extinction-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/14\/extinction-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Extinction (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"extinction_still\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Miguel \u00c1ngel Vivas\u2019s is essentially \u201cI Am Legend\u201d with two men and a little lady, fighting off the elements with TV quality special effects and so so direction. And in the end we\u2019re left with a mediocre apocalypse film that at least tries for something unique and different. The opening is kind of a riff on \u201c28 Days Later<\/a>,\u201d and there are some take aways from \u201cThe Walking Dead,\u201d but I have to give it to writers Alberto Marini and Miguel \u00c1ngel Vivas side stepping the same old zombie apocalypse doldrums. Even if the prologue does involve that same zombie carnage we\u2019ve seen a thousand times over.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Donovan and Matthew Fox give very spirited performances as two men forced in to each other\u2019s company during the end of the world. As it\u2019s overrun by flesh eating zombies, the two find themselves on a bus to a safe haven with Emma, a woman they\u2019re competing for and the baby girl that might be one of theirs. When a bus heading toward a safe haven is taken over by the vicious zombies, the pair of men manages to get away with Emma who is taken by surprise by a zombie and bitten. Nine years later, both men now live side by side carrying a vicious feud with one another and living lives that are parallel by very isolated from each others, Donovan\u2019s character Jack is raising Emma\u2019s orphaned child, while Fox\u2019s Matthew is a hunter anxiously looking for other humans in the wilderness and literally going stir crazy.<\/p>\n

Much of \u201cExtinction\u201d is really about humans living in a winter apocalypse, and waiting for the inevitability of the walking dead returning some day to make their lives a living hell once more. Donovan and Fox as Matthew and Jack make up for most of the film\u2019s short comings, which involve a script that\u2019s way too long for what the story entails. I wouldn\u2019t have minded the film being cut down by fifteen minutes, as the build up to the big boom in the finale takes too long to arrive. Donovan and Fox have to basically carry the film and do it well thanks to the spirited performance by Quinn McColgan who is a sheltered young girl forced to live indoors by her father Jack. Vivas tries for something different not only by picturing two of the last survivors in the country still so bitter about their pasts they can\u2019t even live with each other, but focus more on the imminent threat of the walking dead, rather than plastering the screen with zombies left and right.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more is that when we finally do get the execution of zombie carnage, it\u2019s completely different than expected, as Vivas pictures a new form of zombie that\u2019s evolved and become something of a feral swift monster like the creatures from \u201cI Am Legend<\/a>\u201d that imply perhaps the original zombie virus established was so much more menacing and capable of damage. The finale really makes up for the dodgy CGI and endless computer generated landscapes and snowy tundras that often pulled me out of the narrative. Vivas doesn\u2019t drop us in to the carnage with flesh eating shamblers, but more horrific snow bound beasts have much more on their minds than eating human beings. \u201cExtinction\u201d is pretty much a mediocre apocalyptic horror film that suffers from a lot of set backs but is salvaged by strong performances, and a tense action packed finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miguel \u00c1ngel Vivas\u2019s is essentially \u201cI Am Legend\u201d with two men and a little lady, fighting off the elements with TV quality special effects and so so direction. And in the end we\u2019re left with a mediocre apocalypse film that at least tries for something unique and different. The opening is kind of a riff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[104,302,310,477,906,1012,1087,1219,1221],"class_list":["post-18364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-apocalypse","tag-drama","tag-e","tag-horror","tag-science-fiction","tag-survival","tag-thriller","tag-zombie-apocalypse","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18366,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364\/revisions\/18366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}