The second feature film from Perth-born director Ben Young, Extinction, follows a real-life narrative almost as old as the cinema: an exciting up-and-coming filmmaker bolts out of the gates with an impressive debut, and then, having acquired the attention of the right people, produces a mediocre sophomore effort compromised by the studio. Young’s big splash was the 2016 horror-thriller Hounds of Love. Picking up my jaw from the floor, I described it as “Snowtown meets Natural Born Killers” and the director “Australian cinema’s new enfant terrible.”
Extinction, a straight-to-Netflix alien invasion movie, suggests I may have spoken too soon. The spirit of the incorrigible upstart has gone the way of the malleable gun for hire, turning in the kind of sludgy genre pic that used to be derided for having a ‘made for TV’ quality – back when that label was still an insult. Suggesting the studio (Universal) compromised the filmmaker is an assumption charitable to Young. The idea that this is his untampered vision, the director standing by it with arms folded, seems far-fetched. What was he not allowed to do? What footage lies on the editing room floor?
An air of dreariness surrounds the new film, led by Michael Peña as a family man staving off a potentially world-ending assault
An air of dreariness surrounds the new film, led by Michael Peña as a family man staving off a potentially world-ending assault in the not-too-distant future. Universal tossed Extinction to Netflix instead of releasing it in cinemas, marking the third time the streaming giant has been used as a dumping ground for hot, commercially problematic potatoes – after Annihilation (“too intellectual”, the studio said) and The Cloverfield Paradox (too awful, the critics concluded).
At first blush it appears screenwriter Eric Heisserer, who wrote Arrival, has opened the story with devilish swiftness. Bedlam unfolds in less than two minutes, a rainfall of laser beams from lights in the sky zapping panicked civilians going about their business. Alas, it is a dream sequence. Peter (Peña) wakes up in a cold sweat to an unsympathetic wife Alice (Lizzy Caplan) who has experienced this sleep-interrupting scene before.
Like Michael Shannon in 2011’s exploration of post-GFC anxiety, the thrillingly intense mystery-drama Take Shelter, Peter experiences visions of carnage created by menacing things from above. When the terrible visions in his head come to pass, no longer sceptical Alice asks Peter to replay the dreams in his head, in order to use them as a kind of instructional video. No dice, he explains; the dreams are out of order.
A similar observation can be made of the events compiled in Heisserer’s clunky script, which backloads its most interesting element: a genuinely unexpected twist about an hour into the running time. By this point most audiences will have switched (or in Netflix’s case, logged) off. Splashings of stock-standard spectacle – aerial attacks on skyscrapers, a wartorn CGI spattered skyline, costumed creatures stomping down hallways etcetera – are clearly part of a film done on the cheap (by Hollywood’s standards) without the energy low cost genre ventures sometimes have.
Young must admire sci-fi and horror stalwarts the Spierig brothers, who cobbled together their 2003 feature debut Undead – also an invasion movie – for around one million dollars. Audiences relished its balls to the wall inventiveness and studio bean counters looked favourably upon the filmmaker’s frugality, dollar signs in their eyes. They must have also gazed hungrily at Hounds of Love, which has an intoxicating quality that has all but vanished in Extinction.
Peña’s performance is workmanlike and unmoving, though not without basic likeability. He is hamstrung by a director who fails to forge a single meaningful moment of human connection. The (too) late twist might have appealed on paper, a surprise revelation certainly working for the instantly legendary ending of Arrival, which was equal parts cerebral and emotional.
But Extinction’s caginess feels too clever by half, and even as a straight-up action movie it is mind-numbing and non-eventful. This a film that reveals many meaningless things while keeping up its sleeve elements that might have enriched the experience. By the time a modicum of flair emerges from the writing, it’s too little too late. Even the tangent involving Peter’s nightmares – the most interesting part, however unoriginal – almost entirely disappears, as if the psychological state of the protagonist was neither here nor there.
