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| A "cool" set-piece from Miguel Angel Vivas's film Extinction (2015) |
Urrgh. I get so irritated when the trailer of the film is better than the film itself. Unfortunately, Miguel Angel Vivas'
Extinction (2015) disappoints, big time. Even the post-apocalyptic frozen landscape and fast snow zombies couldn't save the hamstrung emotional relationships that serve as a rubbery backbone to this overwrought, unoriginal film. Vivas' last film,
Kidnapped (2010) was relentlessly bleak and also pretty derivative (Haneke's
Funny Games (1997 and 2007), but still had flair in its Home Invasion stylings. If you're looking for some global-warming-gone-wrong snow apocalypse, I highly recommend Joon-ho Bong's
Snowpiercer (2013) instead.
Still, the Fantasia crowd was super-enthusiastic for the film's World Premiere, especially when the organizers announced the screening's special guest, child actress Quinn McColgan who plays the young Lu, the heart of the film's emotional center. All of twelve now, she came up to the stage poised and excited, ready to watch the film on the big screen for the first time. She revved everyone up, and the hoots and cheers were thundering. Quinn deserves a better movie, as did the Fantasia crowd.
The film opens in a frozen environment, with a bunch of survivors bundled onto a school bus as two lonely buses try to make it through some military checkpoint. The town is under martial law and the passengers are being held by gunpoint. On this bus is Patrick (Matthew Fox--that guy from
Lost) and Jack (Jeffrey Donovan--that guy from
Burn Notice), and they seem to both be bent on protecting a pregnant Emma (Valeria Vereau), because a good zombie apocalypse is nothing without either a pregnant woman, infant, or child-in-peril. Yeah, already I'm annoyed. After an almost comical series of military blunders as the bus in front of them suddenly stops ("Alpha one do you read? "Static" "Alpha one? I'm going to go out there to check it out, close the doors behind me." RINSE AND REPEAT 3 times), the zombies get on the bus, Emma's bitten, and the film flashes forward to 9 years later.
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| Jack (Jeffrey Donovan) and Lu (Quinn McColgan) leave a meager, listless "life" |
Jack and Lu have been holed up in a house for the last nine years, where Jack home-schools Lu on basic mathematics and geography, and never lets her leave the house. She's understandable pretty bored, especially when Jack insists that the monsters are all gone, having frozen to death. She's also pretty fascinated with the guy next door, a grizzled drunken mountain man of a dude with his cute dog, who unsurprisingly turns out to be Patrick. A high barbed-wire fence separates the two houses, and it's clear that divide has something to do with Emma from years ago. Turns out that Jack holds an incredibly pissy grudge; even if there's a zombie apocalypse and his kid doesn't even remember meat, he's not gonna speak to the guy who regularly hunts meat next door. Patrick alternately drowns himself in booze and tries to communicate through a ham radio to the outside world.
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| Patrick (Matthew Fox) gets snuggly with a zombie |
Jack rigidly maintains this enforced division between the neighbors until Patrick comes back from town with a zombie in tow. He seems to get bitten, and it looks like curtains for the neighbor, but somehow the monsters are no longer contagious, so there's that. The kid ends up repeatedly in danger because she never stays put when she's told to, and the two quarreling boys have to band together to keep her alive. The film's narrative is almost entirely constructed by a series of dumb ideas or choices and an overworked melodramatic narrative that is telegraphed by extremely annoying orchestral cues. You could figure out exactly where this film is going with your eyes closed.
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| A pregnant woman (Clara Lago) shows up to complicate things further |
Because it's hard to care about anyone but Lu (and only because she's cute and we are required to), Vivas ups the stakes by bringing a pregnant woman back into the narrative--a different one. I'm not kidding. I wish I was. She does not even get a name. But for that little detail, this film would probably pass the Bechdel Test, although the only time that the two women communicate is when the woman is braiding Lu's hair. Ugh. At least the pregnant lady knows how to use a gun, and she helps defend the house with the inevitable zombie siege goes down.
Extinction isn't terrible. There are a couple moments of levity that make the film quite engaging, and those scenes center on Quinn McColgan's gritty and endearing performance as Lu. Scenes where Lu learns to shoot a gun, and where the neighbors discuss the population of China over dinner, stand out as film highlights. The film has some very satisfying kills as well, and the zombies slurpy ear orifices create just the right amount of ICK.
Matthew Fox actually does a better than average job as Patrick, but Jeffrey Donovan as Jack? Dude, what happened? He's so great in Joey Lauren Adams'
Come Early Morning (2006), but in
Extinction he's a histrionic, whiny, pathetic jerk whom I wanted to die through the entire damn thing. Not a good sign. Better stick to TV. Wait for this film to play repeatedly on either the SyFy channel or FX in the next 5 years. And give Quinn McColgan a part that she can really take a bite out of ;)
