User reviews

"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.

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.

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.

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 people who gave this the great reviews it didn't deserve must be friends of the filmmakers. Done on the cheap, the acting is bad, the story is dull and predictable (I think they were going to make a zombie movie and changed their minds), and the scientific accuracy is laughable. These people out in the open when the bombs dropped, aren't going to survive even 30 minutes, let alone days. Where were the firestorms? the great winds that the release of nuclear weapons causes? These were just many of the gaffs. This was like a low budget version of The Day After. Want to see a truly great terrifying nuclear war film? Get a hold of Peter Watkin's The War Games or Threads. As for this, I wish I could just forget I've seen it.

Tonight, I watched "Aftermath"--a tense and scary film about a small group hunkered down in a basement after a nuclear apocalypse. While it's a pretty good film, the film I expected to see was "Aftermath"--a film about a Polish-American man who is returning to Poland for a visit. Somehow, Netflix just released the film...the wrong film. I called them and they said that the company NEVER ordered the apocalyptic film...and others are apparently reporting that they, too, got this film instead! Well, I guess it was just meant to be that I saw the other film instead!

Both films were made in 2012--so I can understand the mix-up. The Aftermath I saw was directed by Peter Engert and stars a variety of talented but relatively unknown actors. This was a good thing, as the movie is about ordinary people and how they react to a nuclear war. Having Brad Pitt or Meryl Streep in the film might have been cool...but it wouldn't have worked with a picture like this.

When the movie, you learn that several nations have begun detonating nuclear weapons on each other. Exactly how and why isn't important-- what IS important is that somehow a chain reaction occurred and nations are now nuking each other! The film is set in rural Texas and even there they are impacted as soon bombs start detonating all around them. A young doctor, Brad (C.J. Thomason) is backpacking when the bombs start going off nearby--and he and a woman and her blinded brother rush to find supplies and shelter before the effects of the blasts kill them. Finding the supplies is amazingly easy as is a vehicle, but the shelter is another thing. Brad and his two new friends aren't sure if they'll ever find a basement or bomb shelter, as the first place they try results in Brad getting shot! He's going to survive but what about the next place they try? And, even if they find a shelter, what will happen when the folks that remain start to behave like animals...as they most certainly will.

If you are looking for a feel-good movie or a date film, then you need to keep looking. Not surprisingly, "Aftermath" is incredibly depressing and eventually looks a lot like a zombie movie in many ways. But that does not mean it's a bad film--and nuclear apocalypse, unless I am mistaken, SHOULD be incredibly depressing!! Christian McDonald's script is very intelligently written and SEEMS probable. While I am sure nuclear physicists and engineers would find lots of plot holes, it sure seemed real and kept my attention. I also appreciated it because it was a great look at human nature--at least for us pessimists who assume such a horrific event would be made even worse by many of the survivors and near-survivors.

In some ways, the film reminded me a bit of the classic film "On the Beach"--but without all the movie star cameos. In this 1959, the world also starts to slowly die because of a widespread nuclear exchange but too many of the characters seemed amazingly nice, decent and orderly in the face of certain death. I am not knocking it--it's a good film despite this. But it lacks the grittiness and ugliness you see in "Aftermath". Ugly, tense and awful--all good reasons to give this independent film a chance. However, also very good reasons NOT to watch this with your kids!! In fact, I really think it's perhaps too tense, depressing and bloody for many adults--but it STILL is a very good film because it never falls back on sentiment or clichés. It's worth a look...for the right viewers.

Calling this movie depressing would be uplifting it. Through some mix up at Netflix we ended up receiving this sad and miserable movie that was nothing at all what we ordered and expected. I love post-apocalyptic movies so I gave it a shot. Just about when I thought it could not get any worse, it did. The AFTERMATH we were waiting for is no longer available through Netflix which is too bad since I was looking forward to it. I'm sure the script was probably much better than the execution. Interesting production values was just about all it had for me, if that much. This might be one of those movie that the sequel turns out to be way better than the original. That's my opinion and your mileage may vary.

The movie was pretty dreadful. Nothing original here. Pace was slow and the story line was boring. Characters were predicable cardboard cut outs and for the most part, did not engage me enough to care about them. Quite obvious the writer had never been to Texas, knew nothing about the locations of Texas towns and cities in general and no idea where the town of Cameron Texas was in particular. Characters, who were mostly supposed to be from Texas, had no Texas accents and didn't speak or react like Texas natives. I usually have a high tolerance for low budget SciFi/Horror/post apocalyptic movies but this one is pretty hard to stomach. Even though people associated with the film have made an obvious effort to prop up the ratings, this is a real dog. Don't waste your time.

This maybe 'Dark', 'Gory' and 'Brutal' but for me it just lacked 'Fascinating!' Every part of the story seemed to have been hand picked from a 'Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Film Making'.

So it felt really predictable, the acting wasn't great and sets were very standard, low budget CGI (the nuclear clouds)and although he was heavily credited William Bladwin, is not in this movie, repeat NOT in this movie (its a five second sound clip which to be honest may as well have been a voice-a-like).

My highlight was the makeup, which was pretty good actually.

I love B-movies and low budget but this was areal disappointment. Shame too as I was really looking forward to Edward Furlon's return to the big screen!

It's a pretty good and honest "what if".

But, Furlong's work here is great. He's got solid acting chops.

I just wonder with Dark Fate, is there nobody in Hollywood that can put these pieces together? You want your sheboot? Well fine, why not have a John Connor who didn't have the life he was grown up to expect and has become a drunk ass loser?

It's not that Hollywood is out of ideas, Hollywood is too fat and flabby to even know the difference. This is just embarrassing.

I thought this movie was good both the storyline and the acting however it was truly depressing which is a accurate potrayal of major bombing but makes it a movie that will bring down your mood in result of watching.

The plot seem to be all over the place.

Not in a good way.

So many scenes made no sense.