Aftermath | Film Review

 

This is a horror film that recently came out on Netflix. It had a really interesting premise, and I recognised both of the main actors, so I was excited to see if I'd like it.

Amid marital problems, Kevin (Shawn Ashmore) and Natalie Dadich (Ashley Greene) move into their discounted dream house, despite the house's dark history. But when unexplainable things start happening, is there more to the house's history than they know?

There were a lot of good things about this film, but almost in equal measure there were a lot of things that didn't work.

First of all, just in terms of the sense of realism, there is no way they would have bought this house in real life - who would?

Horror movies like this only work when the people in them ignore all of the strange occurrences. But as much as this is necessary for the plot to move forward, it makes the characters seem stupid and frustrating. There is not one character in the film that doesn't make stupid decisions.

I liked the way that the film handled the scares. The jump scares they used were only secondary to the scariness of the actual situation. In fact, the jump scares elevated what was already scary, which is the way jump scares should work.

While I like the actors Shawn Ashmore and Ashley Greene, their characters have absolutely no chemistry, and at times it doesn't even make sense that they're together. In addition, I feel like throwing any two characters into this situation would get very similar results, so it would have been nice to see this film with characters that were more interesting.

There were so many incidents that were completely brushed off (from minor things like doors opening or the temperature decreasing every night, to major things like people going missing in the house and figures chasing them), that after a while it made no sense for them to stay in the house. Why would they, and why did they? 

The end reveal was what really lost the film for me. It was confusing, stupid, it didn't go anywhere, and it didn't make sense. Literally any other explanation (even a predictable one) would have been better, and made more sense, than what they did. It leaves so many plot holes.

During the film, there were a few subplots that had potential, but then went nowhere. After watching the film I did a bit of research on it, because it was based on a true story, and found out that the unnecessary subplots were the parts of the film that were based on a true story. However these aspects were so jarring with the rest of the film, that I think it would have made much more sense to tell two different stories. The subplots were not plots of a horror film, particularly a horror film like this. It would actually have been better for these to not be included at all.

Overall, the film started slow, had a good middle, and a bad ending. I'd probably watch it again, but maybe I'll turn it off before it ends.

4/10