After Image

Hollywood is full of people who have taken basic screen writing courses, people who have been forced to see everything in terms of 3-act structure and what the protagonist wants and how he acts to achieve his goals. You can't swing a dead cat in the movie biz without hitting someone who has this stuff burned into their cerebral cortex.

But somehow the producers did.

If you don't know about classic screenplay structure it's just a boring movie that seems longer than its 91 minutes, but if you do it's a fascinating series of bad decisions. I was considering adding spoilers here but I'm not even sure you can spoil this story. It's an anti-story.

The plus is that the photography is really quite lovely. If you are a trained CINEMATOGRAPHER, you might think this is pretty good.

The crime photographer Joe MacCormack (John Mellencamp) is tired of his profession and he quits his job and he visits his Aunt Cora (Louise Fletcher) that has raised his brother and him since they were boys. Joe meets the deaf Laura (Terrylene), who helps his aunt in housekeeping and has premonitions of death, and they feel attracted for each other. Meanwhile a serial-killer is threatening Laura.

"After Image" is a boring movie with messy screenplay, senseless story, nice cinematography and lots of fake reviews promoting it in IMDb. Nothing that happens in this movie is clear. Joe apparently has seen so many murders that he can not bear his profession; or is it a trauma? What is the purpose of his brother in the story? Laura has premonitions and again, no explanations for her ability. Who is the serial-killer and what connection does he have with Joe and Laura. What has happened with the videotape that the killer had sent to Joe and is erased when he goes to the police? In the end, this movie does not explain anything along 92 minutes running time. Before reading any favorable review in IMDb, see the only review of those who are writing to avoid being disappointed like I am. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Visões da Morte" ("Visions of Death")

I used to like thrillers over horror movies because I figured that the psychology involved meant a lot more thought needed to be put into the characters and plot line to make it work. Lately that kind of reasoning has been kind of failing me.

Not that this is a bad movie by any means. It's just kind of unnecessary. The idea is good and I'm attracted to it because of a similar situation in a Carl Hiaasen novel. A crime-scene photographer who is severely affected by the nature of his photographs decides to escape for a while, going to stay with his aunt. Unfortunately, a psychopath is loose and chasing down the photographer and his new girlfriend, who is deaf and sees visions of future crimes, a la something like In Dreams and whatnot.

I figured this movie would be interesting to see because of the idea of an "after image" affecting the photographer character and how he deals with his, erm, photographic memory, but it didn't really concentrate on that. I thought it'd be interesting seeing Louise Fletcher, the ol' Nurse Ratchet herself, in a different role than the one that terrorized Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Instead, besides her being older and a bit more heavy, it's not.

I can't really say for sure that this movie is that good or that bad. On one hand, it took the time to really develop an interesting group of characters. On the other hand, most of them were archetypes and presented half of the time in slow motion to create drama. The self-reflective element of the camera or the mirror, reflected and divided imaging and the like, wasn't really there. The director obviously took a lot of time finding ways to present the action through an "other" lens, but not really for any real reason except maintaining consistency.

I want to say this to the director: good work, now go make something interesting. Maybe we just have someone who needs a bit of practice on our hands.

--PolarisDiB

A gripping tale by Manganelli. This film is top notch. Riveting and original. I'm looking forward to seeing more of his work! Visually spectacular. Terrylene is wonderful as Laura! She brings a powerful presence to the film. All in all, a must-see movie!

After Image is a movie with a lot of potential, but there is absolutely no clarity in the story whatsoever. John Mellencamp plays Joe McCormack, a photographer who hates his job and quits, but there is no way we understand or even care why or how he got to that point. There is a scene where he throws his camera into the river, with no little scenes building up to that point. No explanation is given for this act, other than a vague response to his Aunt(played by Louise Fletcher), who tells him she thinks he's unhappy. "I'm not unhappy," he says, "To be unhappy you have to care, and I don't care." But why is that?

None of this dialog with his aunt is developed any further, and the only thing that does clarify this is the film's summary on back of the DVD that says that he is "burned out after seeing one too many homicides." Later we see him form a relationship with Laura (played by Terrylene in the film's best performance), but there is very little chemistry, only a connection by the fact that they're both acquainted with Joe's Aunt.

We finally come to the plot (if you call it that) about the killer and the young female victims. We see Laura having visions about the killer and his victims, but how did she get this power? Who is this man? Why is he committing these crimes? What is it the connection between he, Laura and Joe? What in the world is going on here? The story makes no sense and nothing goes together at all. For example Joe's brother Sam, played by Billy Burke, has so little screen time, he is just a distraction. What is he doing in the film?

One scene in particular is a perfect example of the illogical plot and the lack of clarity in the story. For some odd reason, the killer makes a videotape of one of his crimes. It is delivered to Joe with the message "Watch Me." The killer shows his face, and later Joe takes the tape to the police. Miraculously, when he plays the tape for them, there is nothing but static. The film gives no explanation for any of this.

When we get to the ending(which I will not give away), it is neither convincing nor plausible. The killer just happens to show up, spying on Joe, and then the chase begins? Give us a break. With better writing and more clarity, this could have been a great film, with the potential to be even better.

I would recommend that the writers of this movie watch the 1986 thriller, The Bedroom Window, which is as well-written as After Image is badly written. The Bedroom Window was another movie about a male who murders young women, but by the end you know why the events happened, what went on, and why the characters did what they did. This one of those movies where I was hoping to get the answer as to what in the world was going on, in the next scene, and never got it.

On a positive note, Terrylene's performance was splendid, and Mellencamp's was good, too. There were also some good scenes of Rochester, which, hopefully will open some people's eyes who may want to come to Rochester to shoot future films. Movies cannot be entertaining unless the audience either knows what is going or will be able to figure out why or how the events went together by the end of the movie. This one should have been revised by the writers more than once, because the story (or lack thereof) was too cloudy.