Extinction
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
Hell yeah. Especially if you liked I Am Legend. This has everything. CGI mutant zombies. Two men with a shared lady in their past and another one in their present. A dog that doesn’t make it through the movie, damn you all to hell. That’s a fucking rule. The domestic inclination here- it’s strong contribution to the character’s motivations… it feels strangely intimate in a world of two identical-ish compounds on different sides of the street. This movie has a lot of mirror-holding, as well as some damn good acting, special effects, automatic gunfire, pirate scars… This movie has accomplished a rarity for me, which is to build a world reliant on CGI additions and enhancements- and then make me like it. I’m inclined to want analog. But this movie brought a fragile beauty to it all that felt like luxuriating by undulating swaths of lupins covering the highway medians. They had so much bandwidth to play with here that they made artistic decisions instead of fiscal ones. The actors knew each other outside of the shooting hours- it’s obvious that this is stamped all over with professionalism. This is not a traditional zombie movie, and these are not traditional zombies, but this movie itself resembles origami, so we’re outside of our comfort zone where this is at it’s best.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Schools out forever and the buses aren’t making it home
- This is a tiny town. Population: 3. Feuds: 1
- Drinking and blasting rock music. I can empathize with the solution.
- We’re not alone and they’re hungry. Let’s be friends?
- Things get cinemagraphical with some cool shots.
- The hippie in red… burning for me… so sweetly…
- And the sunrise… is another day…
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
I don’t remember the actual reason for it all? I think it was something about a virus? I remember people trying to evacuate on some busses. Uh… so, 9 years after zombies completely overrun the world, and in the middle of what looks like a nuclear winter, these new, advanced, cold-adapted zombies show up where zombies haven’t been seen in a really long time, and they’re really agile and communicative and kinda smart and almost impossible to kill unless… you guessed it! You shoot them in the head! Yet this little scallop of targeting advice is neglected until we’re firmly into the literal last few minutes of the movie. So- mutant zombies. That cannot see anything, not even light or dark- but they hunt by hearing, so they have squishy moving bloody ear things inset in their heads. There’s no memory or tool using or anything- these are more of a Resident Evil experiment that got out type thing.
Where the money went
Where the money went
I’ll flip it a bit. Show me one place that didn’t get the funding that it needed. Everything was spot on. Here- I’m quibbling- but what the fuck is all over that pickup truck? Sure as hell isn’t snow. In fact, none of the snow here was real. So I got beef about that. One could argue that a little too much money was spent looking backwards, and that things could have been simplified or revealed a bit earlier to make room for more variety. I guess I just got a little bored with the dad continually being a stick in the mud.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
For all the shooting and fighting, there’s really nothing weaponish that stood out. There’s the sonic element, like in Mars Attacks, but it’s not really… a cool weapon. This is absolutely off the cuff and unwarranted, but I think that early scene of bashing-head-against-school-bus may have been my actual favorite moment of violence. Oh! I was just reviewing my notes and I remembered the dad punching the zombie repeatedly to the detriment of his fist’s integrity. I liked that scene. They should have taken his hand away from him more afterwards. It’s important people know how much it hurts to punch someone in the head. I’m not sure why I feel this way though.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
You know, these not really that kind of zombies. Kinda maybe mutant zombies. But the point is that they took things pretty far from cannon, they added their own little twists, they thought about the story they wanted to tell and what ingredients would jive best to shuffle it down the line at the right cadence. All that said, there wasn’t any traditional anything. And they killed the dog, which you *shouldn’t* do, so you’re like, minus a point in this section now or something. Reading through my notes, there’s the rememory of the zombie massacre in slow motion set to classical music in the beginning of the movie. Although slow motion zombies are always a good inclusion, ones to classical music are great in a “greater than the sum of the parts” kinda way. And then this presentation of the slow motion zombies? It sorta sets a bar, a standard.
That was new!
That was new!
The zombies evolving and their bite no longer being infectious is new. That was an interesting wrinkle. Still didn’t mean that they needed to kill the dog though. The whole nuclear winter feel to the movie was new- I know there’s other movies out there that present a different yet similar vision- The Road springs to mind. But this tiny world… it felt sort of like if a zombie story was contained within a snow globe. The vibe, the feel of this was different, and although they didn’t get the exact measurements of the dramatic ingredients 100% dialed this time, the questions around the men’s attachments and motivations regarding Lou did a great job of keeping a supporting backbone in place. It was… enjoyable to have two grown men fighting over a little girl, yet knowing that neither of them want to turn her into a harem-slave. “The Evil That Men Do” gets so much attention these days that I feel some movies include a bad human simply out of formulaic devotion. But here- the motivations were fun to understand. Well done.
Review Notes
Review Notes
People in a bus. Tense looks. A soldier in the back.
Oh! Dude. I think the other bus got zombied.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick… could do that all night.
Soldiers getting off the FUCK!
ZOMBIES!!
Very, very intense zombies. I don’t need more coffee.
Why do people keep leaving the bus? That’s where the zombies aren’t. Inside. Meaning, stay inside, don’t have to deal with zombies. It’s almost transactional.
Fuck!! Chaos!! I hate public transportation!!
“I hate crowded elevators, and downtown rush
Packed trains, crazy-ass people on the bus…”
The always appreciated “Zombie chaos to classical music”… some of the best I’ve seen and heard.
Wow. Pounding someone’s face into a school bus until they stop moving. That’s a new weapon.
This shit pops off like the Apocalypse Now of zombie movies.
SHIT!! STARTLED!! FUCK!!
I’ve been scared shitless 3 times in the past couple…
No, that’s not a doll at all.
Oh shit. Mommy got bit.
Nine Years Later. (Babe, I wish you were here so we could say things in a silly French accent.)
We’re… hunting horses.
This is some fantasy shit. Looks crazy. Visual feel is almost Sin City like at times.
Dad, teaching her to spell Photosynthesis is fucking stupid. You think you’re being a good father, you’re not. You’re wasting what little time you have.
Dudes giving whiskey to his dog. I guess that’s not a waste.
It looks like there’s two neighbors who don’t get along? Like, the hunter guy outside, and the book-worm dad inside?
Patrick Thornton. He’s the gun-toting horse-eating hippie. Sounds like a dude slowly trying to stay sane… Oh. He’s blasting this on a PA.
Things are going to be cold, I guess.
Question and answers? Where the hell is everyone? That’s the question?
These two have to be brothers or something like that. Pat’s watching with binoculars, but not in a creepy way.
Lou. That’s the kid’s name.
He’s using cookies to try to keep her in line?
Dog wants out. Oh… She’s taking a cookie… to dog?
Dog belongs to the hippie.
I would punch the dad for this academic crap. Anything required can be found. Route memorization is more designed to facilitate docility and obedience to authority figures. Fuck traditional learning. I was great at it- if I liked the subject- but where did it get me?
And the dad won’t let the daughter learn to shoot? And he won’t play with his daughter? Dad, you’re a dick.
What the hell? This roleplaying is fucking weird. Not ok. Not ok.
Dad gives daughter a box of all of her Mom’s stuff.
And the hippie is playing happy birthday on the PA.
Dad is pissed off, just got his thunder stolen.
Hippie really misses the little girl, but the two men no gettalong.
She doesn’t remember before the zombie change.
All the zombies died from the cold?
This dancing is less awkward than the teacher student roleplaying.
The hippie is using his PA rock system to drive the dad crazy.
One if by land, two if by sea…
And that’s a zombie. I think it was poking around where she feeds the dog cookies.
That’s a scary fade out.
And a gorgeous sunrise.
Ok, I approve of this dadding.
“No. First I had the nightmare. THEN I woke up and saw the monster.”
Who is Ramble?
She’s got really good questions. She wants to live.
Oh shit. The hole under the fence is significantly bigger.
A rabbit? As your guard? A stuffed rabbit at that?
Whoah. These two guys have some issues. Like, running around shirtless in nuclear winter issues.
I think one’s husband, other is brother? And woman dead.
Oh, he’s flashing back… drunkenly… this is never good.
He was with woman, then she slept with dad?
Oh. Finding dead red ripped apart stuff is never good.
Do not follow the trail! Get the fuck out!
Oh shit! Startled!
The zombie things are big running leaping jumping scary mutant things.
Who growl and punch through metal doors if given the chance.
Oh. THAT’S a crash? A snowmobile crash? Must be nice to have snow to land in. Barely did any tumbles.
We’re having a shooting lesson? She just got knocked on her ass.
Oh. Zombie. Threatening hippie. Zombies can’t see? Can only hear? They’re grazy mutants.
“Can I shoot it?” Dammit, little girl, you have one hell of a blood lust.
The first rabbit you see you’re gonna shoot? I mean, I’m sure I would too, I love eating, but… if you get lucky with another one of them, you might never run out of rabbits.
Whoah! The hippie is doing some Paul Revere shit. And he gets the flying clothesline from a zombie.
What? The dad didn’t take the shot and the hippie got bit? And the hippie’s dog got bit? Fuck. This is such a fucking downer.
Dad, you suck.
Oh. Shit. Dad, you don’t slap kids. You’re such an ass.
Really sad moment of saying good bye to the dog. Jesus, I hate these moments. They should be illegal.
I’d kill the dad for letting my dog die, let alone indifference to my life.
Whoah. Flashback to the mom after she was bit. Cutting her arm off.
Maybe zombie bites aren’t fatal? Why did they have to kill the dog?
Shit’s incoming on the radio. I wouldn’t care anymore without a dog.
Dude sounds southern. I’m not sure…
Oh, this just got strange… The voice on the radio just changed to… it’s… evil influence voice.
Feels the same way about blaming the neighbor that I do.
The dad is reinforcing the house.
The daughter is calling his shit.
“Why did you break my watch, Lou?”
“So you won’t know what time it is.”
Dad, you just plain old suck.
She wants out, she want to live. Dad, you’re a wuss.
Off to get flowers for mom. While the hippie buries his dog. I’d kill him. I’d kill him.
Or myself, with bottles.
Maybe both.
Dad is off looting now. Frozen corpses with Jackson Pollacks on the wall behind them.
The hippie is hearing his radio again.
“Don’t make me hurt you.” (pointing revolver at radio)
Lou is quite impulsive. I guess that’s the result of being the only child in existence with a helicopter father.
She’s back out at the fence hole? Why doesn’t she tell her dad about his?
The stuffed rabbit is still there.
Oh. Shit. She’s pulling a runner. Have revolver, will travel.
Throwing flowers through a grate… a zombie sneaking up on her…
Dad… breaks the fuck out of his fist punching the zombie.
The zombie then sticks claws into dad’s chest.
Dad punches zombie more.
The hippie has them under the gun.
But he chooses to save them.
Dad wakes up, is out wandering around somewhere…
Oh! Shit! The hippie done 28 Days Later that zombie!
He’s doing a great job explaining everything to us. The zombies have evolved to the cold, they’re blind and hunt by sound, it’s really damn hard to kill one.
The radio is talking to the hippie again. He turns it off, though.
She left him a drawing. She’s inviting him over for dinner tomorrow night.
I’m not sure he’s not completely cracking up.
But, it appears to have gotten him into the bath after quite a long time.
It looks like its gonna be an awkward dinner.
Oh. Shit.
Dad, you’re a dick.
Little girl looks good with some scars. I wish I’d gotten bad-ass pirate scars when I was a kid.
Sounds like they’re going to make a teamwork. That’s not really based on math.
“Do you know what the population of China is?”
“Right *now*?”
That’s the best thing about the end of times. All us adults will get to tell children stories that are just what we remember of movies. ET appears to be a good one.
So, which one is the father? That’s the big fucking question, isn’t it?
Don’t apologize for the dog. He still should kill you for it.
A good, interesting conversation about safety of staying or roving.
The dad is such a fucking jerk.
I think Lou is the hippie’s child. Which makes this whole thing pretty fucked up.
We’re flashing back again? To the hippie drunk? The hippie… killed the mom? Somehow?
A rough scene of Dad taking Lou away from the drunk hippie.
Oh shit. The monsters are verbalizing out in the snow. Talking like wolves.
Nightmares… such delicate, fine wine.
Out in the truck, driving around. That an old GMC?
Oh, the bad flashbacks… The hippie left the mother to fend for herself while he got hammered. That’s how she got bit.
Fuck. That monster peeled back the door to get out.
Lou just disappeared in the middle of a dark warehouse…
Never mind, everything is fine. Or is it.
That’s… Is that the mom? Can’t be. Gotta be a zombie though.
Whoah! She’s losing her cool!
“Calm the fuck down!” God, I wish there wasn’t such social stigma to saying this to people.
They’ve acquired an unconscious transient.
Are we seeing that she’s pregnant? There’s a level of strange urgency going on here.
Hypothermia is no joke. Ask my wife.
Jesus, the dad is a control freak.
Here comes the sun do do do do, here comes the sun…
Oh shit! Night terrors! Ask my wife.
Uh… so much happened… the new woman is pregnant, and the captured zombie was calling to other zombies, and she killed it, but now there’s more out there… and then a car went by with REALLY loud bass, and I took a hit and started coughing and had to run to the kitchen for water.
Looks like they’re getting ready for a siege. Air tools generally only work if a compressor is feeding them. And since I can hear anything else, they don’t have one going there at the house.
It’s time to forgive each other.
The zombies are here.
The zombies are climbing the exterior of the house. I would not be prepared for that. I would not have boarded up the upstairs windows.
This kid needs to learn. She’s been coddled too long. I bet she shrieks and grabs arms when she gets startled.
Oh! Dude! I just got so totally Jeffried! That’s what’s his name from Lost!! Yeah!!
Lou is down in the flooded basement. It’ll be safe, he said. It’ll be fun, he said.
They’re trying to clear the house…
There’s one in the basement with Lou!
It’s fight time!
Dad, why you no pull the trigger?
Gorgeous little layer-cake shot of the three floors of the house… have to see it to understand it. Really nice though.
Everyone is in peril!
Lou solves her issue. Mostly.
They zombies are in the house walls? Have you ever renovated a house? There is not that much space in there. Mice die and stink the place up. That’s about the worst of it.
So much tense fighting! So much zombie hissing!
Zombies have really gross things for ears.
Oh. Rock music to the rescue. Lovely. All the zombies are freaking out, they can’t handle the volume.
But the radio has someone on it?
Hard to hear since suddenly they’ve all broken out automatic weapons.
Yup. Generator ran out of fuel. Music was powered by fuel.
Oh. Very low on ammunition as well. Things look dire.
Dad appears to be losing it. He can’t solve this shit with academic crap. Hey, how about you spell phyrokytosis NOW? Make everything better.
He’s gonna shoot her?
A woman on the radio said that you have to shoot the zombies in the head to kill them? We are an hour and 41 minutes in with 11 minutes to go- and that includes credits- before they figure out that head shots are good things? Were I to scream that I am incredulous, it would be an understatement.
The hippie is making a run to draw them away…
A last teeth brushing remark…
Great flare-lit scene.
One more last flashback? While he dies?
Yup. That’s the signal. Big badda-boom.
In the truck… that is NOT covered in snow. I think that’s wall-texturing crap.
A wonderful sunrise…
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
I am so hungry. I haven’t been in the mood to eat today, so I’ve had 5 slices of Killer Dave’s Raisin Bread. And some grapes. I’m gonna eat more grapes soon too, so I’ve got a plan. And some coffee, a little too heavy a hand on the milk as it were. I have two ideas that I want to introduce today. One, I have pondered before, but this first one, well, it’s a new idea.
Subjectivity is what kills communication, no? We have to say things from a perspective, but if the emotional aspect of the stated perspective is not agreed upon, the factuality of the utterance may never even rise to the level of influence or import. It’s almost impossible to state things without subjective bias, and that bias may not be active, it’s simply the lens with which you are observing the item or event.
You can’t be expected to know that which you can’t see, but then again, you never know everything, so there’s always a good chance that anything said could later be proven to be false with the addition of supplemental information. We can take the bullshit going on in the Ukraine right now, where Putin tried to claim he was getting rid of Nazi’s, yet his own troops are the occupying fascists of the scenario.
History is known not so much as a series of events, but an interpretation of that series of events. Everything we understand and as such are enabled to speak to is a tenuously held perception in danger of upset from the gentlest rocking wave. This all known and accepted; there may be an area where we all think of something different, yet we are all 100% correct.
Imagine a crazy cat lady. Your crazy cat lady is different than my crazy cat lady. Even if you think of one from popular culture, such as The Simpsons, your perception of that cartoon persona differs from other people who think of the same image. The point I’m driving at is that every single one of us gets a different mental image when we think “Crazy cat lady”, except in this instance, with this subject matter, we’re all also 100% correct.
What else can that be said of? “This bread has just the right amount of cheese in it.” No- that’s another subjective statement, but wars have been and will continue to be fought over the correct proportions of cheesy-bread. When I think of the perfect amount of mushrooms on a pizza, it’s not a number or a literal amount as it is a feeling evoked by memories of pizzas that *had* the correct amount of mushrooms on them. But my amount of mushrooms and their amount of mushrooms are probably very different. I understand there are even some ignorant fools who eat their pizzas completely devoid of mushrooms. What is the point of this?
You know who I want to fight? Whoever designed Domino’s topping line- like, the literal design of “This goes here, this goes there.” pizza making stations. You put olives in a place where if one is accidently dropped, it falls into the mushrooms, where it is not noticeable. You harried, hurried worker has no opportunity to see it, so it ends up on some mushroom lover’s pizza regardless of how they feel about olives, or brine, or pickling in general.
Packing shit in salt was the only way to keep it from rotting back in the middle ages. Salt created such an inhospitable environment to anything life-including that food didn’t perish and could be dragged across oceans in big convenient tubs. But that doesn’t mean we still have to eat food prepared this way! We have technology now that can reduce our soaking of foods in salt-water prior to eating them. Why… people… you can eat better than that. So.
The first point is that although human experience is vastly different- ouch. I just bit myself eating a grape so badly that I can taste blood. I can’t stop eating grapes though, so this is what blood and grapes tastes like. Thank god I’m not eating olives, you know? The salt would be torture. That’s why grapes are better. Like I said to Mabel, I says, the first thing that I wanted to talk about is how there ARE things that we all disagree on yet are all right about.
Yes, so far there is one tenuous example; crazy cat women- but, as a proof of concept, if you’ve imagined a crazy cat lady at any point during this introduction, you are correct. That is the correct crazy cat lady- the exact one you were supposed to think of. The next item I have to talk about is more empirical evidence based.
Things are automated because humans are lazy and inventively clever monkeys with digital watches. Bagels are made, and some are put into plastic bags and sent to stores to be sold along with cream cheese and lox- if you’re one of those “I like to eat food designed during the middle ages to last during long sea excursions and that’s it.” you probably already like lox, but I went until I was in my early 20’s to realize I liked cream cheese.
A bunch of us went up into a field out in the woods and set up tents and had a big campfire and ate a lot of mushrooms and partied all night. Someone even got their system car up there- we were blasting techno at butt-puckering bass levels- I was obsessing into the fire and all the crap you can see, and then I got hungry, and then I ate an entire sleeve of bagels with cream cheese on them. That was the tipping point when I realized that cream cheese was good. I’ve been trying to avoid the stuff ever since.
There’s a great story about one of my friends punching the car to try to get the music to stop, since he’d gone mainly non-verbal at this point of the night. I also remember we concocted a small, tent-based transient religion centered around the idea of our marijuana pipe having dreadlocks.
Yes, there was chanting. Then fire. I have no idea how that night turned out. I mean, I know I had a great time and realized I liked cream cheese. But… like… I could have also buried a stranger in a shallow grave and there’s a good chance my brain would still prioritize the remembering of enjoying cream cheese over the corpse’s existence.
I know I’ve never killed anyone outright. I’ve never fired a gun at anyone, or stabbed them, or defenestrated them… But sometimes I wonder about all the drunk driving I did. Did I cause any accidents that didn’t literally involve me? Have you wondered what the biggest thing you put into movement was? How many of us realize what it is? What is the largest snowball that you kicked off? Has it ended yet? Have any repercussions found you yet? What’s this concept of “yet”?
It’s my Taoist leanings, the hope that everything does come full circle before settling. Talking about circles, Bagels. These bagels that are sold in plastic sleeves are pre-sliced, for the most part, because the advent of the bagel was announced by the shriek of the first consumer accidently cutting into their own palm. Bagels are like turkeys; they’ll fuck you up. Know when to run. Or know where to buy pre-processed. As in, the fight and innards are out of the turkey, and the bagel is pre-sliced.
How are these sliced though? It’s not like there’s factories of labor diligently slicing away. By now, there has been a bagel slicing revolution, or probably more than one. Some history I find too biased to keep up with aside from a nodding acquaintance. But there is a machine out there- a whole family of machines- who exist to pre-slice bagels before they go into the plastic sleeve.
Here’s something else great about engineers- although they’re mean sonsofbitches if you have to work on something down-stream from them- and this is always- but they do smart things like understand that not all bagels will be the same size, and sometimes adjustments will need to be made.
When I worked as a CNC machinist, we had a couple really old mills that were so sloppy that every winter and summer they’d need to be re-zeroed since the heat and cold would affect them so. It’s not like the bagel slicing machines have this same issue- bagels are nowhere large enough to require a two-story mill.
But the machines that slice them for us do need to be adjusted and tuned periodically. We need to also understand that if you or I walked up to one of these bagel slicing machines, it would not be instantly intuitive as to how to adjust what in order to achieve what result. What this means is that tuning these bagel slicing machines is a learned skill. A novice would likely lose a toe or something.
The tools, the process, it needs to be learned. People get better at it the longer they do it, just like anything else. How many bagel factories are there on the planet? It actually doesn’t matter in the least. Let’s say each factory has a single machine-tuner.
One of these factories puts out the best-sliced bagels, judged on as-yet unspecified bagel-specific criteria, while the other factories rank down the line to the worst. Maybe this worst place cuts theirs vertically. This also does not matter. But there is a factory whose slicing machine out-performs the rest of the slicing machines in the rest of the factories, and this is because that machine’s bagel machine tuner is the best there is.
The point I want to make though, is that this person has no way of knowing that they are a world champion.
They tune their bagel slicing machine better than anyone else on the planet tunes theirs; they’re the top-fuel funny-car wheels-up race-winners, the eagles soaring where eagles dare, and at the same time, they probably drive home in a purple two-wheel drive economy Ford Ranger and live a really small and uneventful life.
Would knowing change anything for them? Are you a world champion if it’s not contested or acknowledged? Would it be better to know, but be unable to prove, or is it best to live simply, without comparison?
Extinction “Nine years after the zombie apocalypse, the undead has evolved to wipe out the human race.” Well, that is short and sweet. Good thing too, since the rest of this intro reads like a coke-binge manifesto. First thing. The undead HAVE evolved. HAS is sorta, like, “I has cheezburger?” It’s cat, hence, not real English.
I also think there’s something important to consider regarding do they have the intent on wiping out the human race from a semi-logically thinking it through perspective as a set goal and then steps to achieve it, or do they just have a great idea to turn all humans into tummy-contents? If you’re gonna let an eight-year-old hurry through writing the copy though, I go with what you got.
And that’s a picture of a dude looking really cold. Maybe through a porch railing or something. It’s got snow on it. Another side note- I have purchased this through Amazon already, so I *have* watched it. At least, that’s the assumption. I have no idea what it is though. Could be 152 minutes of Matthew Fox reciting his favorite Chris Kattan lines to Jeffrey Donovan and Quinn McColgan. This is a completely new bicycle.