Logline: In Chile, a group of travelers who are in an underground
nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the
surface is just the beginning of their nightmare.
Cast: Eli Roth, Ariel Levy, Nicolas Martinez, Andrea Osvart, Natasha Yarovenko
Directed by: Nicolas Lopez
I think most people that
are into film known the name Eli Roth now, especially after his role as The
Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds. I've
been a fan since Cabin Fever and
although I wasn't hyped on it, Hostel
was really popular when it came out. I'm currently one of his 220k followers on
twitter and lately he's been retweeting a ton of people who have nothing but
extremely positive comments on his recent work. Although I hated Hemlock Grove, the werewolf Netflix
series he directed/produced, he did mention on reddit that he had very little
say in what occurred and that he only directed the pilot. I didn't place the
blame on him for that. Coincidentally, I'm not even sure how much work he put
into this film either, because he's not the director, but I'm sure he helped
out with it and he's got a screenwriting credit. Anyways, many people are tweeting him with nothing but love for
this film and I had to check it out. I guess twitter does work in advertising
content after all.
Review
The film starts off
bumpin'. Eli Roth hitting on women in clubs, being a drunken mess and blowing
his opportunities in Chile. From now on I'll call him by his character name,
Gringo. Gringo meets up with his two friends Ariel and Pollo. Ariel speaks
Spanish, and Pollo is kind of a Hangover
II Alan rip-off with the shaved head, big beard, and similar appearances
and humor. Anyways, the first 30 or more minutes of this movie takes a huge
dip. Introducing characters at a party with some comedy is a good thing and it
can be fun, but when you introduce them at three different parties over a span
of 1/3 of the movie, there's a BIG problem. I can honestly say that besides picking
up hot women, there were no goals. There wasn't a story. There wasn't even much character backstory explored during this time. Nothing was happening.
Don't get me wrong, it was really cool to see Chile through a tourist's point
of view, but there has to be something drawing me in. Something to give me a
reason to keep watching. I guess before I begin discussing the second act it's
important to note that they met three girls that are journeying and partying
along with them by this point.
All 6 of them are in an
underground club when an earthquake rattles the walls and the ceiling begins to
collapse. The scenes get quite gory and for a really low budget they were done
quite well. Finally the movie is beginning to get interesting. Mindless gore
can be alright if done well, and I think it was here. Ariel loses a hand and
they escape before they can be crushed by the collapsing ceilling. If that wasn't
enough, the alarm rings to indicate that a Tsunami is incoming and the group
must get to high land. Cool, we have a goal now, but wait. Ariel lost his hand!
He needs a hospital ASAP. The group haggle with a man they met earlier to put
their friend on a ski-lift type of machine to take him up the hill.
Unfortunately the weight is too heavy and the rope breaks, sending him crashing
back down the hill to his death.
So now there is one main
goal. Get to high land before the Tsunami hits. How does one go about spicing
this up? Add conflict. When the earthquake hit, a bunch of prison inmates were
able to escape and they start chasing our group of characters. They begin running
away under a bridge when a piece of debris falls on top of Gringo and he's
stuck there to die. The girls try to get him out as Pollo rushes for help
somewhere else, but the prisoners catch up forcing them to hide. They cover
Gringo in gas and force him to tell where the girls are. He accidentally looks
with his eyes and gives one of them away. This is where the film gets gruesome
and the weak hearted will turn it off. I almost did. The prisoners rape the
girl while Gringo watches, and then they throw a cigarette on him and we watch
him burn. Although the burning looked cool and all, the rape was hard to sit
through. Anyways, Pollo finds someone and helps him out of a fire truck that he
was stuck in. They return and see the girl being raped, so Pollo hacks him up
with an axe. As they run away, the rape victim gets shot and killed. Then in
the next sequence, Pollo dies by a random gunshot. What the hell? This is
madness.
Just when you think the
girls are going to get away, the person Pollo recruited takes his shirt off and
shows prison tats when he has the girls alone. He kills one of the two sisters
and the other sister kills him in gruesome fashion. The only girl left, Monica,
stumbles out on the beach through a cave and it's now broad daylight. She lies
down and takes a moment to process, but as she gets back up the water rises and
the film ends as the Tsunami touches down.
What a damn ride. Well,
it seemed like it from my summary, no? I actually didn't really like this
movie. I think it's because of the characters. Although the beginning 10-15
minutes were funny, as time passed they became boring. This is because none of
them were fighting for anything up until the quake, which felt like an
eternity. So when the story actually started to pick up, I was disconnected and
it was hard to enjoy. It's a shame really, because there were memorable scenes
and there were shades of a decent plot.
Topic of the Day
As a filmmaker, I think
the absolute worst thing that you can do is take your time. As a writer, the
idea is to get the reader to keep flipping pages, one by one. If for any short
period in time the story goes off course, that could lose the audience's
attention. By having character goals, mystery, stakes, timelines, and so many
other writing tools available, a movie like Aftershock
wouldn't have suffered from a mind numbing first act. Character goals are the basic
start to all of this. These are what give the story direction. Having a trio of
characters spend 30 minutes picking up girls and exploring favelas in Chile
aimlessly is the definition of taking your time! I got bored and I imagine many
others did too. The film picked up later on and developed these things, but for
me, it was too late. The idea is to grab the audience's attention as quick as
possible.
Conclusion
I wanted to like Aftershock, but it suffered from a
script that seemed like a first draft. The story took way too long to develop
and when it did, I was already disconnected from the characters. There is a
brutal rape scene that's hard to watch, but the rest of the violence and gore
is actually kind of fun. When the story does pick up, it's tense and
interesting, and the ending is pretty cool. Although the ending credits rolled
and my immediate reaction was extremely negative, I've given a little more
thought and the latter half of this movie was somewhat memorable. Call it the
aftershock effect, if you must.
5/10
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