Extinction (2018)

Just one idea, with more holes than Swiss cheese.

I really like good alien invasion movies, but there are so few good ones that I'm expecting very little when a new one comes along, and once again, that caution has served me well for Extinction.  The premise is that our hero Peter (Michael Peña) is having nightmare visions of an alien invasion that are driving him mad and worrying his family, friends and work colleagues. Before long though, his nightmares come true as alien invaders storm the city and he is forced to fight to save his family.

Spoilers Ahead! If you haven't seen the movie, or don't care, don't read beyond this point. You have been warned!

There was a lot I didn't like about the first hour of this movie. The characters are two dimensional and cliched - the overworked father, the troubled teenage daughter, the cute younger daughter, and the attractive wife who may or may not be thinking of leaving all living in an apartment they couldn't possibly afford. Then there are the people, they're all good-looking, slim and happy. I got annoyed there was no indication of a date, though it seemed apparent this was some time in the future (the movie had to insert the obligatory useless holographic display presentation). The actual attack was impressive, but it wasn't long before I was fairly certain that the "aliens" were human beings, not a huge leap given that we'd seen they were our size and shape with five fingers in the trailer, so when the helmet came off just approaching the hour mark, it wasn't looking good.

Then comes the twist, and it changes everything. Alice, Peter's wife (Lizzy Caplan) gets shot and is taken by medics at the factory where Peter works, which we now see is some form of resistance HQ. In a neatly understated scene, it's revealed that Alice is a synthetic human and that Peter is as well. Over the next few minutes, as Peter "recharges" Alice, we're given a fairly substantial montage of memories that explain synths (yes, they really do call them synths) fought the humans and won, with the remaining human population evacuating the Earth for Mars, leaving the synths to rebuild the world. The synths have their memories altered so they think they're real people and they've lived this way - unaging - for 50 years.

On reflection, this makes the first hour of the movie make a lot more sense and I was suitably impressed. The characters are two-dimensional because they're synths, the apartment isn't theirs, they just appropriated it after the war, everyone is fit and good-looking because they're robots and the "aliens" are humans because, well, they are. Peter's nightmares are not prophecies, they're memories. So, as the hero synths flee the city for their "underground base", I was thinking "hey, this could be a decent movie after all", but then I thought some more.

So let's get this straight. At some point in the future we develop perfect human synthetics, we try to wipe them out by military force, they turn on us, win the war and everyone on Earth evacuates. How would that work? Well, it really wouldn't.

We see in the movie itself that the synths are not superbeings - they can be killed with gunfire just as easily as humans - so unless they had overwhelming numbers, and a heck of a lot of them had military training and access to weaponry, it's hard to see how they won the war.

How did the synths live for 50 years, thinking they were human, without ever wondering why they weren't getting older, and why their kids were still kids, and why no one ever gets sick? OK, you can replace memories, but how would that work with friends, work colleagues, famous figures, etc?

Why did the humans try to remove them by force? Couldn't they have been infected with a virus, reprogrammed, or simply shut down? We see in the movie that they're electrically powered, so a decent EMP could surely take them all out in a given area, couldn't it?

How did every country, every human agree to this "synthocide"? Sure, there'd be a lot of people in favour of it, but I'd struggle to see the balance being much more than 50/50 and the attack on the synths would have to have been precisely co-ordinated worldwide. There's absolutely no chance of that happening.

Is every human either dead or evacuated? We see a flashback that implies every human in the city is dead or gone, and a shot of ships leaving the atmosphere. Were there no sympathisers? What about humans that didn't fight or those that supported the synths? This is just as unbelievable as the attack on the synths itself. Somehow, at least 10 billion humans have either been killed or shipped off-planet (what happened in countries without spaceports?). No.

Some synths apparently retained their memories in order to prepare. In the same post-fight city scene mentioned above, we hear someone (possibly Peter's boss (Mike Colter)), say "they'll be back". They've had fifty years to prepare but when the attack comes it's a complete surprise, and their weapon stocks appear to fit in the back of a small SUV. What, no satellite defense system? No anti-aircraft weapons concealed on roof-tops? Was no one watching Mars, looking for launches or approaching craft?

How did the humans build a ground force and attack ships they believed would be sufficient to take back the planet? Fifty years is just two generations and we know that even suviving on Mars is an epic challenge, let alone breeding up a million or so soldiers. And don't even get me started on the problems of Mars' lower gravity and what that would do to second-generation humans born there.

Why did the humans attack with force? Wouldn't it make more sense, as it would in the first place, over that fifty years to find a way to shut down the synths another way? Were there no secret human bases on Earth? It seems fairly easy to get back and land without being spotted.

When the synths escape on a subway train, why is it covered in graffiti? What, in the 50 years since the war, when the synths rebuilt the city, did they not bother to clean/repaint the train, or are there juvenilee delinquent synth graffiti artists?

Sigh.

As is so often the case when a movie has such gaping plot holes, it's not so much the holes themselves that annoys, as it is that they could so easily have been avoided with just a single night in a bar with a bottle or two. Why not have the synths wipe out most of humanity with a biological attack that only 2% survive? Ding! Huge population numbers, worldwide coordination and sympathiser problems solved! Why not make it 200 years or a 1000 since the war? Ding! Problem of building a human invasion force solved! Why not have the colony on Mars apparently dead and abandoned (humans have secretly moved to another base)? Ding! Problem of not watching the skies and preparing solved! OK, these solutions are not perfect, but they came after 2 minutes thought with a cup of tea.

There are good things about this movie - the preparation for the reveal of the twist is cleverly done. Peter's nightmares are at the same time vague enough and similar enough to be memories of the first war with the humans, and the scenes where he attempts to use his "prophecies" to guide their escape are nicely handled. The actual reveal is a total surprise - I didn't see it coming at all - and I like to think I'm pretty good at spotting these things (I did guess the aliens were humans pretty early on - I guess that should have been a clue). All the "problems" I had with the first hour make sense after the reveal, and there was clearly a lot of thought put into the scenes, acting and direction for that to work. The SFX are mostly very good (although the final sequence of a bridge being destroyed looks pretty amateur by 2018 standards). But man, those plot holes...

It's not just the plot holes that are bad either. Long before the hour mark the constant whining, screaming and sobbing from the two girls had made me want to stick pencils in my ears. There's a ton of cliches - the convenient "I know tunnels", the young child that goes back for their doll, the everyday guy protagonist who turns out to be a former fighter, the lot. Plus, of course, the ending painfully telegraphs an upcoming Netflix series.

If you leave your brain at the door, this is easily a 4* movie, but the plot holes just keep hammering away. Perhaps if the writers had brought their brains into the room, especially after binge-watching the excellent Humans, it could even have been 5 stars.

The Rezort (2015)

In desperate need of an original plot.

Here's the pitch:  A remote island accessible only by sea converted into a unique holiday park for the rich.  Dangerous beasts roam the island, contained by a network of gates and electrified fences while the visitors tour the island in special trucks.  A sudden computer failure wipes out the security measures, setting the beasts loose, and a small group of tourists struggle to survive as they attempt to flee the island.

Does that sound familiar to you?  It certainly should, Jurassic Park (1993) has grossed over a billion dollars since its release and remains an iconic movie.  So why am I writing about that movie when this review is supposed to be about The Rezort?  I'm writing about Jurassic Park because The Rezort is that movie with dinosaurs swapped out for zombies, and it's not just the basic premise.  At times it seems like a team has sat down with a copy of JP and faithfully transcribed the scenes, then The Rezort was made with a tenth of the budget.  The approach to the island is now by boat, not helicopter, Archer (an uncomfortable-looking Dougray Scott) acts as the love child of Sam Neill, Bob Peck and Jeff Goldblum from JP, Melanie (Jessica De Gouw) tries to be Laura Dern, falling some way short, we have a budget computer operating centre, and Land Rovers replacing the automated cars, but it's all pretty much there.

OK, there's nothing wrong with taking a good idea and twisting it. Heck, books and movies have been doing that forever and we all know the concept that there are only so many stories to tell, but there's direct transfer here that makes no sense when you're hunting zombies rather than dinosaurs.  In Jurassic Park the dinosaurs are contained by electric fences - that makes sense, they're animals and we know that electric fences are competent at containing living animals.  The Rezort also uses electric fences (of course - JP does) but does that make sense when you're trying to contain zombies?  Do zombies feel pain?  Can they be killed or even affected by an electric fence?  The movie itself has a scene reminding us they can only be killed by a headshot so if you're herding zombies, don't you just want really strong fences?  The electric fence setup in JP works because we can accept the power failure allows the dinos to break down those fences, but in The Rezort I'm never convinced they would have provided suitable containment in the first place.  There is a slight nod to this, we see some gates popping open when the systems go haywire, but if it's the opening of the gates that's important, that's yet more evidence that the electrification of the fences is not.  If the gates are the vital container, then why the heck would you engineer them to fail to an open state?  Engineers have been doing this for hundreds of years, if you've got a system that changes state on power supply, you engineer it to fail to a safe condition, that means the gates failing to a locked state (with some sort of manual override only operable by living humans), not an open one.

The rubber-stamping of Jurassic Park is not The Rezort's only problem.  This is, apparently, a venue for the very rich, but must still have huge operating costs.  The park in JP is clearly set up to receive thousands of visitors, but the accommodation on The Rezort's island looks more like a 3-star hotel in Spain (and, since I've just seen the filming locations include Palma de Mallorca, probably was), and when we see the tourists leave on their first "safari", it's a half-dozen Land Rovers - and that's the total capacity of the garage we see - so that's what, 30 people, tops?  How does that park survive?  Does each guest pay $100,000 a night?  We're given the idea it's expensive, but it's still within the reach of the common folk, given what we see of the guests.  Even that 3-star in Spain would struggle with a guest count that low.

The "weapons training" is at the same time laughable and terrifying.  Laughable because it appears to consist of a staff member handing out automatic weapons and just allowing the guests to work it out for themselves for 10 minutes, and terrifying because the scene looks dangerous even from a filming point of view, with cast waving these weapons around with abandon.  A quick check of IMDB shows that there was an armourer on the crew, but perhaps he was off that day.

Then there's the safari itself.  We see the guests taken to various spots where the undead are manacled to remotely operated targets - like a living dead version of a law-enforcement training range - but then we're shown our main characters taken to a tent village for the night.  Seriously?  The island is covered with thousands of flesh-eating infectious zombies and you want me to sleep in a tent in the middle of a valley?  NO WAY!  I don't care what fences you have (and no one even asks about this, by the way), there is no anyone with 3 brain cells to rub together is going to agree to that.

We do, of course, have the obligatory "vehicle won't start in an emergency".  OK, it's a Land Rover Defender and they have a... less than spotless reliability record (I should know, I owned one myself for 5 years), but this movie trope is so old and tired it makes me scream every time it crops up.  These are not even your average household car, they're vehicles used professionally, dispatched from a maintenance hanger, there's no way they should have problems starting.  Arghhhhhhhh!

So, our heroes have to cross the island to get to the port - well, the small jetty - to escape the island before it's bombed into oblivion.  From this point on it's pretty standard zombie-movie fare.  Jump scares, running, more jump-scares, dark inexplicable passages, heroic sacrifices, shock bites on heroes, you get the idea.  To be fair, the action here isn't bad (which is what lifts my score to 3 stars), it's just completely and utterly unoriginal.

There is one clue that not all went smoothly on filming, and/or that there were late changes.  In the intensely annoying opening newscast/exposition sequence that lasts waaaay too long, we're shown a studio with a background image of "Simon Givvens, Rezort CEO"

then a few seconds later are told that the CEO is "Valerie Wilton" (played by a very much wasted Claire Goose).  I don't recognise the actor in the Simon Givvens shot, but clearly something didn't work out there...

The Rezort isn't a terrible movie.  It's well-shot, the actors do the best they can with the plot and the script, and the action sequences are entertaining, but it's really hard to give any credit to such a direct take on Jurassic Park and equally difficult to accept "just another zombie movie" with really nothing to distinguish itself from the others that had gone before.

How It Ends (2018)

A torturous, illogical crawl across the US that ironically never seems to end.

The trailer for How It Ends does give clues that we're not looking at anything original here.  Something terrible has happened on the West Coast and Will (Theo James) and Tom (Forest Whitaker) set out on a road trip from Chicago to Seattle to find out what's happened to Will's pregnant girlfriend, Tom's daughter.  The premise itself, therefore, sets us up for a buddy/road trip movie where Will can prove his worth to the ultra-uptight ex-Marine Tom and sure enough, that's what we're given.  The pair faces dangerous challenges that they overcome together, growing to respect and love their individual failings.  Well, something like that.  So, what's not to like?

For a start, very little in the movie, either in the actions of the characters or the scenario painted, makes much sense.  When Will, who has been visiting Chicago on business, and meeting the parents for dinner, finds that the flight to Seattle has been cancelled and the airport descends into chaos when the power fails and cell coverage goes down, he's somehow still able to find a taxi to drive him back into town to the parent's apartment block.  At the apartment, Tom has clearly already decided to go to Seattle but packs his wife off to drive on her own somewhere (the dialogue is unclear at this point, as it often is throughout the movie).  Seriously, the world's going to hell and you're sending your wife off on her own?  No thought that it might be safer if the three of you stuck together?  No matter, we never see the wife again and throughout the entire remainder of the movie Tom never tries to contact her or even speaks about her, so perhaps they weren't that close.

By now our heroes are on the road and looking for gas.  Astonishingly, not only are they able to drive right up to a pump at a filling station, but somehow the pumps still work, even though there's no power.  Just hours into whatever the heck has happened, thugs are preying on drivers at this gas station in broad daylight and surrounded by people.  I know we're all only a couple of meals from anarchy, but this seems extreme.  Tom, of course, scares them off by pulling a pistol, which seems to shock Will, who clearly has forgotten Tom is an ex-Marine setting off on a dangerous journey.

There's a scene on a bridge where Will - driving Tom's boat of a Cadillac - reveals previously unhinted driving skills that probably challenged the stunt driver.  There's the crashed military transport train that Will loots, apparently finding only two cans of gas (in decidedly non-military cans) and nothing else, no food, no weapons, water, nothing.  "Found this spoon, sir!"

The list could be endless.

Then there's the odd cameo of the Native-American girl Ricki (Grace Dove) who they meet when the pair pull in to get their car fixed.  They persuade Ricki to come along as their mechanic, on the basis (from what I can make out) that she's always wanted to go to California.  The point that the West Coast is, by anyone's understanding, either destroyed, invaded by aliens or both, seems moot.  Ricki travels with them for 30 minutes of screen time, really adding nothing to the story (nor, in fairness, taking anything away), then simply walks off into the fields, never to be seen again (nor ever mentioned by the pair).

By this point in the movie, I was seriously wondering where the heck everyone was.  Tom & Will are driving from Chicago towards the West Coast.  Now, even if there's been an epic disaster, there should be hundreds of thousands, possibly still millions of people fleeing that region East.  It's no spoiler to reveal that Will's girlfriend has escaped, and she was in the city when the weirdness kicked off, so it seems logical (sigh) that a goodly proportion of the rest of the population would have done as well, but no, the roads are deserted, and when Will gets to walk around an impressively messed up Seattle there's not another soul to be seen.

When the credits finally roll, after what seemed like five or six hours but was apparently only two, we're left completely in the dark.  Other reviews have criticised this aspect of the movie but in truth that's not its worst sin, it's the hotch-potch of old ideas, poorly thought out actions and snail's pace progess that makes this so hard to enjoy.

Terrifyingly, there's a good chance this production is (or was) intended to lead to a series, indeed, some segments of the movie have the whiff of episodes roughly stitched together - the Ricki bit, the bit with the neighbour, the bit with the family - and we can all only hope that idea has now been put away in the Netflix basement.