Extinction (2015)
(In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) Let’s face facts: I have watched too many zombie movies. They don’t surprise me any more, they don’t interest me any more, they don’t even make me happy any more. Their painfully generic nature is made worse by dozens of unimaginative filmmakers simply doing more of the same without any self-awareness or wit. At a first glance, Extinction does seem to offer something different, with a glacial northern setting made of gray-blue snow and ice. While purists will argue that zombies, absent heat-generating mechanisms, would simply freeze solid in the winter, the pragmatist in me knows that this kind of logic holds no sway in horror screenwriters’ brains — they want snow zombies and they will get snow zombies. So, Extinction’s other “invention” is a different kind of not-quite-undead zombie led by sound rather than sight. But again: This changes nothing. This is still a post-apocalyptic tale of a small community of survivors being attacked by zombies, killing many of them but being nearly wiped out along the way and this is somehow portrayed as a victory despite the ever-dwindling number of humans kicking around. It’s the same old thing with a not-so-fresh coat of white paint, and I’ve had my fill of it. Writer-director Miguel Ángel Vivas can’t do much that’s either new or effective here: even the attempt at characterization comes across as slowing down the film. I wish I could use Extinction as an excuse to let go of zombie films and never look back, but who am I kidding: I’ll still watch more of them and hope for the best.