Aftermath

I want to give it a higher rating. They got so many things right. Script, direction acting all well done. The top review had a good summary, except that he thought some engineers would be able to tell him where the movie was wrong about radiation. They wouldn't. One of the few times that the cinema ever got remotely close, and this by far was the closest. The things some might want to quibble about would go the way depicted if people didn't know what they were doing. Which is the case here. No one for a change is given the role of brainiac of the universe. They really don't know what they're doing. They also don't have a prepper/survivalist who has been training for this contingency to help them out. Just some regular folks who are trying to deal. Supply issues are glossed over, but so are most character introductions because in the real world people don't run and announce their profession/helpful hobbies and quirky humanizing interests to those they've known for a long time, and even less so to strangers.

A+ for apocalypse vs humanity. A- for humanity survival needs. A for not hand holding the nincompoops who need every little detail explained to the. Although with all the good effort, and work in this wrongly maligned little gem, somehow it never gels to be more of a movie than an apocalypse movie. In that niche genre, where it doesn't intersect with action (cough The Road Warrior cough) it's the best you'll find.

The poster to the movie was far cooler than the movie itself.

It feels like the filmmakers allowed their love of Zombie films to influence the movie they made. The plot is about a nuclear holocaust that seem to come out of nowhere hitting on American soil and focuses on a handful of people who are dealing with the whole thing.

The cast of characters are all locked in a seller waiting for the radiation to clear up enough for them to surface. Like most small movies of it's caliber, the movie focuses mostly on the inner turmoil between the characters, who I did not find that interesting. This small crew also had to deal with others from the outside who minds have been altered do to what's happening on the surface.

Not much to the story but it did not need to be, but I my interest in the characters was lacking.

Apocalypse movies are meant to have explosions, huge special effects and people fleeing from one place to the next to survive!!!....well if you are looking for that sort of apocalyptic survival movie you have stumbled to the wrong place. Ultimately the movie stars 9 peps in a cellar for one and half hours...which is quite realistic I suppose but realism is kinda boring hence the point of watch a movie to "escape from reality" Kudos to the make up team - the actors and actresses did look like they were slow succumbing to the effects of radiation. However the acting at times was just strange, especially when they are fighting off people - they seem to go all Rambo then at other times they seem quite timid. So if you want to watch a movie and have all hope washed away then sit back and enjoy the micro-scale fall of humanity.

"Aftermath" cannot really stand up to films like The Day After or Threads, nor books like Alas Babylon or On The Beach or One Minute After, but it does alright. The movie's success is to serve as a warning to avoid nuclear war. I wasn't going to comment until I saw a 1/10 review grumping about smoking around a pregnant woman; was the commenter oblivious to the ionizing radiation permeating the countryside? If it ever comes to this, pray you go out in a blazing flash. Misery awaits those who survive the initial exchange. 6/10

OK, so here goes, my first review. I could have chosen a thousand better movies to review, so why this one? Well, as an apocalyptic movie goes, this is the second most depressing film about nuclear war that I have ever seen. The first being an animated film (yes I know how that sounds!), When the wind blows by Raymond Briggs (the guy who wrote The Snowman), It's one of the saddest films I have ever seen. Anyhoo back to The Aftermath, some scenes are pretty far fetched. There is no real explanation as to why events take place. The characters are not fully developed and a ton of other minor foibles, but that being said, this is a film that makes you think, what would you do?. Would you try and battle through?, would you resign yourself to the inevitable? or would you curl up and die? Pretty depressing stuff all in all, but in this climate, in which we are destroying ourselves by the minute, it is an all too realistic scenario. Unfortunately.