(spoiler free)
Face the end of days with new Netflix Original, ‘Extinction’, which sees a branch of science fiction elevated to futuristic levels. It may look slick and have an intriguing development but unfortunately the wow factor is missing.
Peter (Michael Peña) is a maintenance worker and father to two girls but his home life is being set back by his ever frequent nightmares of an invasion tearing apart their world and killing everyone. Alice (Lizzy Caplan), his wife, wants him to go to a specialist but his visions are the least of their worries as they quickly become reality and the family find themselves in desperate need of shelter before the weapon-happy visitors find and destroy them.
It’s certainly an interesting film that follows, but only in the meatier second half of the narrative. ‘Extinction’ suffers from taking just that smidge too long to reveal its riveting core. As soon as the sixty minute mark hits, then the curtain to the truth is lifted but before that it feels like a so-so run of the mill sci-fi flick. I obviously won’t spoil the outcome of the movie but all the way through the vaguely slow fifty nine minutes, there’s a cheap look to the film, like it’s trying to seem blockbuster but not quite achieving that goal, it could have been more contained and intense instead of relying on green screens and lame CGI explosions.
The oncoming threat isn’t in any way menacing at first, you see their stature and image and they look like some hokey costume from pre-2005 ‘Doctor Who’ but gladly that visual is something that the story explains and makes for a neat final thirty minutes. It’s a shame there wasn’t an ounce more drip-feeding before this.
Director Ben Young definitely has a grip on this sleek, futuristic world though and even if the earlier stages aren’t as tense as they deserved to be, he ensures that the “‘Cloverfield’-esque group of characters in peril attempting to seek safety” plot device isn’t as cliched as that and in a shadowy tunnel the film takes a welcome turn.
I think if Universal had of still retained the distribution rights and backed more cash into it, this movie would have looked fairly cool on the big screen but as a streaming feature for the powers of Netflix it’s just alright. Still, it’s one of their better Originals and I thoroughly appreciated the last half an hour.
Written by Troy Balmayer
Rating – 6.5/10
Question: Which Netflix Original would you have most liked to have seen in the cinema?
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