EXTINCTION. B-Movie Science Fiction from Netflix

I may not be deeply familiar with the filmography of Michael Peña, but I get the impression that he belongs to that group of actors who are rarely seen in leading dramatic roles. It has happened, sure—but that doesn’t mean those attempts were particularly successful. I honestly don’t understand how an actor with such an inherently unserious expression and the appearance of a fool is supposed to carry the weight of tragedy in a way that makes me sympathize with him and follow his story side by side as a viewer. Let’s add that in the Netflix film, Extinction, Michael Peña’s character faces a tragedy of cosmic proportions.

He plays an ordinary man who dutifully does his job and takes care of his family, but who is plagued by disturbing nightmares. In them, he sees the pain and turmoil caused by an attack on Earth by strange, alien-looking beings. What he doesn’t know is that these visions foretell real events. Will he be able to save his family?

The story begins in a very typical way. In the first part of the film, we get the standard set of clichés meant to deepen the family drama. He doesn’t care about the kids, so the kids don’t like him. He doesn’t care about his wife, so the wife doesn’t like him. The drama intensifies. And it’s all because of those nightmares. When it finally becomes clear what’s going on in the protagonist’s head and what the titular “Extinction” really is, the film even gets interesting for a brief moment.

But only for a moment. Then Michael Peña steps back into the spotlight, with confusion written all over his face, delivering awkwardly constructed lines meant to highlight his character’s supposed romanticism. And at that point, it becomes painfully clear how much of a mistake this film and its underlying ideas are. A guy who spends the entire movie looking and sounding like he’s just dropped by his aunt’s house for his favorite cake simply cannot convince me of the heavy themes that Extinction is trying to communicate.

Built on a popular sci-fi kitchen-sink formula, Extinction, like many before it, uses an alien invasion not to scare us literally. Then as now, it’s about playing with metaphors. The problem is that in the hands of the director, Ben Young, what we get is not intelligent entertainment, but a dull, heavy-handed lecture meant to hammer into our heads a single “universal truth”: respect others as yourself.

Pros? Hard to say. The film’s visual style is fairly clean, though the seams in the special effects show in places. The design of the aliens is somewhat interesting, although I couldn’t shake the association with insect-like creatures—which probably wasn’t the intention. The twist in the film, as I’ve mentioned, might surprise some viewers. But personally, I’m too old for this kind of trick. My mind is too sober, too familiar with these well-worn tropes to be fooled like a fish snapping at a shiny lure—only to find emptiness on the other end.

Extinction is B-movie cinema in a neat, sterile package. Everything is clean and tidy, hair stays perfect, makeup doesn’t smudge, and no one’s face ever looks tired. The bigger problem is that it also lacks real emotions, tears, sweat, and blood. Young may have intended to expose a certain artificiality inherent to the film’s themes, but I doubt it was his plan to let that artificiality spill over and dominate the entire picture. Yet that’s exactly what happened.

If Netflix keeps releasing duds like this, I’m afraid it might eventually come back to haunt them. Though I get the feeling the people at the top don’t care at all—they’re too focused on viewership numbers, pushing quality aside. There are many good things I can say about this streaming platform, but not that it knows how to make good films. One outstanding Okja doesn’t make a spring. That’s why critics must remain firm.