Review: Aftershock (2012)

Review by Disgruntled Monkey

Director: Nicolás Lópeza
Starring: Eli Roth, Ariel Levy & Nicolás Martínez
Writers: Guillermo Amoedo, Nicolás López & Eli Roth

Now there are movies in this world that I classify as the 'Fuck You' movies. Basically you watch a movie that travels a dark road and by the end you find out that there isn't a happy ending. In fact there was never going to be a happy ending in the first place.

A good example of the 'FU Movie' would be The Mist. We are introduced to likeable characters, they go through hell which indears us more to them and then the end punches us in the gut because we care for them. Unfortunately horror is full of 'FU Movies' that have the shocking ending down pat, but they forget to give us likeable characters. Enter Aftershock.

At first I thought that Aftershock was going to be different as the characters weren't too bad to begin with. But soon it dirty's them up so I couldn't give a shit anymore. By the end I was just exhausted and when the shocking ending happened I could only cheer cause the movie was finally over.

Aftershock is a nasty film, full of fucked up people and that before the earthquake hits. When that does we get some decent folk, but most of the time we are just greeted with horrible humans. Even when things are going right for the good folk, mother nature appears and kills them off.

There are two things in this movie that I thought were good. The kernel of an idea at the core that human nature is worse than natural disasters and the gore effects. Unfortunately both are over exposed.

The central idea is great and in more refined hands could have turned out to be an excellent movie. However we just linger in the nastiness and when you find out that you won't be getting out of that nastiness the exhaustion sets in. The gore is great and did get a few winces out of me. Well in the beginning. By the end I just didn't care and nothing they threw at me got me going.

Honestly avoid this movie. It's not entertaining, there's nothing here that will hold your attention. It's just being nasty for nastiness sake. Maybe if there were some characters I could care about it wouldn't be so bad, but in the end I just wanted it to be over.

Category	Rating	Reason
Entertainment	0 quakes out of 1	There is nothing remotely entertaining or interesting in this movie.
Script	0 quakes out of 1	I'm not sure what they really wanted to accomplish with this story.
Acting	0 quakes out of 1	I'll defend Eli Roth and his directing, but his acting is another thing.
Directing	0.5 quakes out of 1	Directing wasn't bad but nothing great.
Technical	0.5 quakes out of 1	Gore effects were pretty good.
Overall	1 quakes out of 5	Avoid!