Zombie flicks tend to focus on the “during” part rather than “after” though exceptions do exist, including 28 Weeks Later and, er, Fido. Soon you can add Extinction to the list, a post-zombie apocalypse movie starring Lost’s Matthew Fox, where a small group of survivors used the inclement weather to “outlast” their undead aggressors.
Zombies are often treated as one-dimensional threats — no one really expects them to do much other than shamble along and devour the living. “Evolving” undead is an angle usually avoided by undead fiction, but Extinction wants to have a go, putting forward a scenario where zombies can adapt to their environment.
The movie follows Fox’s character of Patrick and a father-daughter pair in Jeffrey Donovan and Quinn McColgan, as the characters Jack and Lu respectively. Rather than run, the trio have survived in a small town for almost a decade, until it all goes south when the undead — stronger and more deadly than before — make a return.
The CG backgrounds in the trailer are a little unconvincing, but I like the way it transforms into a Night of the Living Dead situation, with a group of people stuck in a boarded-up house surrounded by zombies. It’d be a shame if it relied on jump-scares, without leveraging the psychological horror as Living Dead did.
It’s due out in the US on 31 July. Sadly, there’s no Australian release info. Still, it might be worth keeping an eye out for if you prefer more intelligent zombie films.