A man's home life starts to suffer when he has recurring nightmares about a destructive and unknown force. He must soon find the strength to save his wife and two daughters when extraterrestrials launch a devastating attack on the planet.
Extinction exemplifies everything creativity and content management. I have always had a feeling that Netflix were soon going to become the undisputed kings of tv, and here they have declared ownership of a part of our cinematic interests; Budget Movies. Netflix,Ben Young, Todd Liebermann Brad Kane have done a good job of taking an overflogged theme and making it into something outrageously good. With Little to Unknown character ensemble, the script writer and the production team managed to conjure a beauty out of near obscurity.
The story may at first seem like your regular alien invasion and extinction level event depiction; these sort of themes have been repeated over and over again that one might have been sceptical about bothering to watch this one. Perhaps that explains why it took so long for me to get to seeing this one. Peña,Lizzy Caplan and Mike Colter did at least offer some modicum of familiarity and assuredness on the job, while the rest may at times have been shaky here and there. But that is not where the beauty of this movie lies, it's greatness lies not in the action sequences or the over the top CGI, but in top notch script writing, screenplay and A-grade direction. The way and manner in which the producers chose to tell the story was captivating; throwing us off Balance for a while with the opening scenes, making us think this was going to be one of those family shows where the protagonist had to deal with psychological issues. Before I got to seeing this movie, I had felt it was maybe going to be all action no story and definitely no direction, but when it started rolling, I had a change of heart, feeling that this was going to be more of a psychological conflict where the Hero had to battle with his inner demons. On both grounds, I was so way off the mark.
To state it briefly without giving much away, I will offer you one expo, Netflix have mastered the art of misdirection. Halfway through the movie and it started looking like a retelling of Godzilla: monster Planet, from say, the point of view of Godzilla itself. The way the story was pushed as a senseless, unprovoked alien invasion soon got viewers talking about the reasonability of having an alien invasion with homo-invaders. I mustered confess I was taken aback when I found an alien with compassion towards humans, but the big reveal had to be the biggest reality check of 2018 for me, not the kind of conflict resolution I would have expected, but one that got me really excited!
It was not about an alien invasion, more like a home coming and a reclamation move. We really did enjoy watching this one as it did take us on a high octane ride, making the audience bond with the protagonists before slowing the pace with the big reveal, and ending with a realisation that all is not what it seem, or maybe all are not who they seem to be....
I can assure you that at the beginning of the movie, you would never have thought who the villains were, what the reason for the conflict was and ultimately on whose side lay the moral high ground. I am still undecided on which horse to back on this one. Perhaps if Netflix were to act differently, and we had a sequel,we may finally get the chance to decide. But knowing them, there may not be a sequel.
This is a movie you would love to see, and perhaps have an interesting moral discourse over. Who do you think started the conflict? Was there a justification for so doing? And the actions taken by our protagonists, did it come off as too cowardly or maybe just plain hopeful? And could perhaps the story have been told without leaving a whole lot of details as done here? To me, I feel leaving out some details did give the movie it's awesome Air of mysticism that really got me involved with this piece of artistry.
Please if you haven't seen this movie, you should endeavour to, it would obviously be very much worth your while. The story is brilliantly told, the actors may not be over the top on acting, but they did just about enough to get audience involved in their dialogues and conversations. The conflict is the type I love, one that creates a moral dilemma while also being complex to a certain degree. Impressive from Netflix and Kane.
I perhaps would have loved to see more efforts on the CGI front, but then, it's a budget movie.
FCA'S AppR :7.9/10. Perhaps an 8.5 /10 for creativity and a 6.5/10 for a lack of Originality (alien invasions are not new).
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