So, we have this winter-based survival horror movie that's been given tepid ratings and being passed off as a low budget zombie flick...
SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE!!! Extinction begins with no time to waste in setting the atmospherics and then killing a lot of people to sate the appetite of horror fans with high standards.
It starts out as a zombie horror but then becomes something along the lines of a Guillermo Del Toro horror movie or series (hint), but I must be frank. Del Toro writes better drama than he directs, at least compared to the director of this movie. Applause is deserved also for the writing. It keeps you guessing.
Also..
Setting, lush! Cinematography, lush! Special effects, lush! It's picture perfect and yet dynamic, which is pretty hard to pull off consistently over such a duration in movies with thriller elements.
Others may be put off by the pairing of Matthew Fox and Jeffrey Donovan and a young girl being placed between them. If that's your hang-up, you couldn't be any more wrong. They're intense, honest, creepy and down to the bone gutting. Nobody could have done it better and I'm not a huge fan of Fox or Donovan, but they delivered.
I also usually avoid horror films with kids, myself. I just think they get in the way. Quinn McColgan as Lu is bloody terrific and I doubt the film would have been as effective or terrifying without her slant on what takes place, without being typical of a fictional child. She's so thankfully devoid of cliché.
How subtly done and finely nuanced the characters are puts Stephen King to shame, without spoiling anything, meaning that you can hate them when you must, but you grow attached to them regardless, which is almost a forgotten art in horror.
That brings me to the end. Here's a great horror movie that needs to be recognised as a collectible. It's not run of the mill, it's not clichéd and it's not all drama with no gore or action on account of a child. It's what horror movies need to be right now; freezing out the water and thickening the blood again. It's the best survival horror gets and it's accessible to anyone with good taste.
If you want to compare it to other good similar survival horrors, I'd recommend watching it with the 2009 French movie Mutants and/or The Colony. That was pretty similar. In that it had snow and stuff...
