Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, fight off an invasion to discuss Extinction, which premiered on Netflix in the United States on Friday, July 27, 2018.
Sound Off! is meant to be a reaction, but not necessarily a review. After all, while we are all individuals, even mutual love of something (or hate) can come from different places: you may find everything from critique to fangirling to maybe even hate-watching.
Now, join J.L. Gribble, Lane Robins, and Merrin as they talk about Extinction. [Note: Spoiler-free!]
J.L.: After a convention weekend, watching Netflix in bed while getting cat snuggles is probably the best way to spend a Sunday evening. Thankfully, Extinction is a Netflix film, because it meant I didn’t have to pay theater prices for it. This film is not even worth the cost of a matinee.
When it opened with the over-used narrative trope of someone waking up from a dream, I knew I was in for a predictable ride. I almost wish the actual invasion occurred later in the movie, because the constant fight for survival was less interesting to me than the slow-burn tension at the beginning of the film. And even that tension wasn’t terribly interesting, because I didn’t understand why such a shiny future still appeared to have stigma against mental health care.
The movie did get points for being an alien invasion versus “normal” people, but that’s just a personal affection I have for the conceit. I also appreciated that during the fight for survival, the husband and wife work as an equal team, in regards to both physical and intellectual needs (beating off the invader and problem-solving about how to escape).
The twist was interesting, but it was portrayed in a convoluted manner. And in the end, it only raised more questions than it answered. In fact, there were a lot of questions about that movie that I need answered, starting with “Why do unused tunnels have working emergency lighting?” to “Is there only one city on Earth? What happened to everyone else?” I have a hell of a lot more questions than that, but they verge into spoiler territory.
Need a disaster flick to put on in the background while you surf social media on your phone? This isn’t a bad choice. Need a smart science-fiction film to suck up your attention and make you think? Look elsewhere, alas.
Lane: I tried to watch Extinction all the way through. I did. I honestly expected it to not be much of an effort. I like B movies. I like the cast, and I was intrigued by the off-kilter aspect to the world: sort of ours, but not. Weird clothes, red eye makeup, strange government facilities, and hey, mental health care for all their workers? You KNOW you’re not in Kansas any more.
But Extinction just felt like a chaotic slog.
Because they were holding back so much, it all felt… loose, untethered to anything. Our hero works as a machinist (?) somewhere, for some big corporation, and there’s a big project they’re working on with some urgency for some reason? And the heroine works in the city doing something with repairing tunnels and… whatever, she’s working on the tunnels just so she can tell them to escape through them when the world goes to hell.
I knew there was a big twist, and for a while I entertained myself trying to think of what it might be. About an hour in, I looked for spoilers. Then I got really aggravated.
Because that? Is an awesome twist. A double-barreled twist, even (time-frame and identity of the attackers). I really wanted to like it.
But… I just didn’t. Part of it is that I was watching it on my small computer screen — so that when all the chaotic darkness was going on, I mostly got… darkness and grunting and shouting and no visuals. It was arduous to watch, and arduous to listen to. I’m pretty sure if you looked at the script, there would be pages of just, “Characters shout each other’s names shrilly.”
It’s unfair for me to criticize the movie for so many world-building gaps when I didn’t finish watching it, but I have so many questions about the whole freaking society. So while I liked the concept of the movie, I just didn’t think that the society would work the way the writers seemed to think it would. Even after I found out the spoilers, I couldn’t believe in this society as presented.
In the end, I thought, I would have loved this premise as a short story or a novella. But not as this movie.
Merrin: Here’s the thing about Extinction that you need to know: it’s really super boring until the twist. It’s frustrating, you ask yourself a lot of questions, there’s a lot of “But why would [redact for spoilers]?” People do things that don’t make sense, and you basically spend the first hour or so waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You’ve just gotta hold on, buddy. I’m sure, in an era of people who grew up on “I see dead people” and such, that there are people that are going to predict what the twist is, but I didn’t see it at all. Like, I knew everything wasn’t as it seemed, but I didn’t think it would go THAT hard. I’m just saying, I’m impressed. My mind, she was blown.
Netflix continues to blow it out of the park with cinematography, and I appreciate that even though this was rated M for Mature, it wasn’t so gross and violent that I couldn’t watch it. I’m kind of a weenie about that.
I wasn’t sure how I’d like Michael Pena outside of a comedic role, and it turns out that I didn’t love him or hate him. He was fine but nothing blew me away. Lizzy Caplan continues to be great. The actors that played their children seemed to be cast for their ability to cry on command but you know, that is actually a useful skill set.
This was miles better than the last Netflix original film that I watched, and makes me way more likely to give Netflix originals a try in the future. It’s definitely not a perfect story and the ending leaves you with a lot of questions. I could write a thesis on the things I can’t say without spoiling the film, but anyone who decides to watch this movie based on these reactions deserves the surprise that it delivers.
Featured image via Cnet.
J.L.’s image via IndieWire.
Lane’s image via Thrillist.
Merrin’s image via Romper.
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