Aftermath

A pair of brothers. A cold post-apocalyptic world. Simple traits of a story of survive. And the inspired manner to tell a story about ages, relations, survive and manner to become yourself. Beautiful cinematography, decent performances. And the right, precise message. Short, far to be original, it is a good example of interesting and correct use of theme.

The post-apocalyptic world is not a new one for those of us that watch a lot of short films, and there are very few films where they manage to create something wholly new. Aftermath isn't one of those films, and it does have a pretty familiar feel to it. However it does still work because it is stripped down and simple in what it wants to do.

The first thing it does is create a simple, cold world where survival is on a knife's edge and death is sudden if you are lucky. The second thing is to put a pair of brothers as the central characters, with the older very much sheltering the younger – perhaps too much. The journey of the younger brother away from that protected state is well done here, with sudden violence played out against a cold backdrop. It isn't amazing as a plot, but it captures the cold, crisp place very well, and it reproduces that coldness in its world and characters. This does produce something quite dramatic and simple – and it works well for what it does.

Every dark domsday movie who is creating fear about our future, is in the long run programming us on a unconceous leve and will be an selvfulfilling prophecy. Unstead we could create a brighter future, were we could find good solutions together - and this also will create a automatic program in an uncertain future, where this strategies will show up and guid us. So what do we send into the future? Bad strategies we will see in our mind and create it in reality, when something happen? Or is it more wise to create better movies, with good strategies for a future in crisis, so we can remember them when nessecary.

Make a movie here and now about a possible future and only thinking about entertainment here and now, without reflecting about the consequenses a movie like this can have in a real crisis, is shortsighted and dumb. Creating fear in a past periode of time in a movie is ok and we can comprehent this easily. Doing the same in a possible future for us, only creates fear in people about the future and they loose the motivation to live. Filmmakere should know this and doing a better Job. Not giving us gray and ugly pictures, without any light in the end of a tunnel like this movie, but give us good pictures, good survival strategies and hope for a better future. Then it will be real Art we can use for something more then just a hour of dark entertainment.