Film Review: Extinction (2015)

     Copyright: Vertical Entertainment

The best way to describe the movie Extinction is to perceive it as a weird dream about a script about a time after a zombie apocalypse. The film opens in the present time, where an outbreak of some kind transformed patients into rabid killers, brought the army onto the streets and people were being evacuated to the protected zones.

Two friends, Patrick and Jack, along with a pregnant woman, try to reach safety. A decade later, society has fallen apart and the world has entered a new ice age (for whatever reason), most are dead, but Jack and Patrick are neighbors, living apparently secure lives while one of them is also raising a child, the nine-year-old Lu.

But, here’s the twist – the two men are not communicating with each other in any way, even though only a road separates the two houses.

Film Review: Dark Places (2015)

Copyright: A24

From its onset, the Dark Places movie emits that particular vibe that tells that this film will not be a huge success with the audience. As a dark mystery and a thriller, it begins on a really somber note, showing a mass murder of the Day family in which a brother was accused and sentenced for killing his mother and two sisters.

The remaining sister Libby Day, then a small girl, is two decades later a grown woman, (played by Charlize Theron), who still lives off of the charity coming from random people who learn her cruel fate. Libby, now a jaded and detached individual, learns that in spite of this, the money is drying out, so she is forced to listen to an offer from a shady organization, who desires to reopen her case and find out what really happened that night when the murders took place.

The introduction of this group is one of the most impressive and unexpected elements of the film, which is both out of place (in a good way) and extremely intriguing. It is a shame that later on, the same element loses all relevance to the story.

Crowdfunding Push - Abattoir: Waiting Room

Imagining you're an animal in the slaughterhouse sounds like a really bad idea, but this short film being made in Serbia explores the exact same idea. Here's what Abattoir: Waiting Room Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign page states: 

What if we are not the most powerful creatures in the universe? What if "the others" have the power and reason to serve us what we deserve? What if "the others" are here just for that - to show us how wrong we are doing?  Two humans, one “waiting room”, many questions, and two stories. First one: the host (played by famous Serbian actor Radoje Cupic) is a vegan who didn’t do much to save the animals, besides the fact he stopped eating them; his karmic punishment is an existence with never-ending brief residents who are about to end up as a meat products. Second one: newcomer (played by highly regarded Nenad Pecinar) is just one of many with the same questions, behavior, and fears. As a meat-eater, he will end up as a… you can guess.

Abattoir: Waiting Room campaign is entering its final 12 hours and has currently collected over 20% of the funds it is looking for. Check it out here and see if you can help this film out.

Film Review: Knock Knock (2015)

Copyright: Lionsgate Premiere

It’s not good to be bad, and being bad might end with you being killed, is what Knock Knock movie is trying to tell us. Temptation can be interesting and fun, and it can even dance around in your living room in a shower robe, but at the very end of temptation, something horrible and sharp might lurk in the dark.

Essentially, this is all well and nice, but the cog in the mechanism of this revenge horror film is its main actor – Keanu Reeves. This man has plenty of, shall we say, unorthodox talent and a strong screen presence, but here, the actor transforms into a devastating miscast right during the opening scenes.

Let’s take the first few moments of the film. Here, we see Reeves’ character, a man by the name of Evan Webber, being woken up by his loving wife and family. Webber is an architect in his 40’s and he has a gorgeous spouse and kids straight from a cereal commercial. At this point in time, all is splendid in the Webber household, but still Reeves acts as an alien who suddenly appeared in a human body. This alien studied human culture for a long time and prepared for this situation in simulators, but through an error, he arrived there way ahead of schedule.