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Deep in the bowels of a Spanish morgue, an autopsy is taking place. The
man works in silence, his hands coated in blood. No one else is around.
No one but the corpse of a young woman who has died in a car wreck. "Aftermath"
is a film that has been hyped beyond belief since it's release. The
controversy surrounding it is immeasurable. As such, this short little
film from director Nacho Cerdà
has become a highly sought after item. Highly sought after and highly
difficult to find (at least for anyone expecting to find it through
mainstream retailers). Very few sellers will carry it due to the film's
extreme subject matter (ironic considering that many of the same
retailers selling the "Guinea Pig" movies have refused to sell "Aftermath").
Virtually the only place to even acquire a copy is over the internet or
at horror conventions. All the buzz stems from it's intense,
unflinching, sobering depiction of death and necrophilia. The short
tells the story of a morgue technician who is left alone with the body
of a female auto accident victim and his deranged perversions that
drive him to molest, butcher, and eventually mount her in a macabre
mockery of human sexuality.  "Aftermath"
is not enjoyable in any way. And that is why I liked it so much. It's
difficult to make me flinch. I've seen a lot of depraved stuff as the
insatiable schizoid cinemaphile that I am. But "Aftermath"
takes the cake. It remains the ONLY film I can remember that has EVER
kept me so enraptured and revolted at the same time. I've never seen a
movie before, whether a short or a feature length, that has made me
lose my appetite. "Aftermath" did just that. I started watching this film while eating a Hot Pocket®. About 3 bites and 5 minutes in, I couldn't even look at the damn thing anymore. The gore in "Aftermath" is not just graphic, it's graphic and realistic. So realistic in fact that the first time you watch it, I guarantee you'll be in awe of Cerdà's
special effects crew. The gore is realistic to the point of being
highly unsettling. The line between movie magic and real life has never
been blurred so deftly. And nothing in this film -- neither the gore
nor the actual instances of necrophilia themselves -- is presented in a
tongue-in-cheek kind of way. It is all depicted in a very hard, cold,
hollow way. The direction is very simple but at the same time it is
gorgeous. Cerdà has really outdone himself with the direction of this picture. "Aftermath"
is made with a certain artistic flair that is unmistakable yet subtle.
It doesn't overpower the story and it's very easy to get drawn into
what you're watching take place. Normally when I watch a movie I find
it difficult to separate myself from my knowledge of filmmaking. It can
be hard to entirely enjoy a movie when you're constantly thinking "Oh, that's an interesting shot" or "I bet they were thinking of so-and-so when they wrote that one line for Generic Actor X". With "Aftermath",
that problem doesn't exist the first time you watch it. The first time
you watch it you sit there in silence, enveloped by what you're seeing.
And when you're done watching, the first thing you want to do is sit
down every one of your friends and make them all watch it in attentive
silence as well. The direction is engaging, but harsh as well. It
echoes the grim quality of the themes explored and heightens the
darkness and disgust that it evokes in it's audience. "Aftermath"
is a bleak, unnerving, disturbing film. It is not meant to entertain
you. It is meant to move you. It is meant to make you feel that sick
feeling in the pit of your stomach. And it succeeds in spades. Not
everyone will care for "Aftermath",
but if you like well-made, brutal, sincere cinema that actually makes
you feel something and isn't all rainbows and lollipops, if you like
cinema that dissects the stinking, ebony underbelly of a society
obsessed with sex and violence, then I doubt "Aftermath" will disappoint. 
While the core concept of a coroner engaging in acts of necrophilia
isn't original, that doesn't mean it isn't make for interesting film.
For an inexperienced filmmaker this could've wound up a tedious,
boring, pretentious endeavor. But Nacho Cerdà is quite the talent and it doesn't really matter that "Aftermath"
has no real plot. Because the horror of what the film portrays is far
too profound for us to cast it aside. It's unwaveringly effective in
it's slow, methodical, sadistic explorations of themes of a darker
nature. Watching "Aftermath"
reminds you of two things. One: when we die we are at the tender
mercies of others. The sanctity of the bodies that we tend to think of
as our very selves is naked and vulnerable to be dishonored,
disrespected, and destroyed. What to us is precious, is just a rotting
slab of flesh to someone else. Or perhaps a sex toy. Two: no matter how
invincible we think we are, and as much as we like to espouse the ideal
of the body being a temple, the fact of the matter is that the body is
actually meat. No more. No less. We are animated meat. And fragile meat
at that. All that keeps our red, gooey insides from falling apart is a
thin layer of skin. That's it. When we die what we leave behind is
little more than a piece of maggot-infested beef.
Pep
Tosar plays the necro-perv morgue worker and does a great job
considering the fact that he had to play a role with no dialogue in a
film almost devoid of audio aside from Mozart's Requiem and the sound
of Pep's own breathing. The film relies entirely on it's
beautiful-yet-grotesque imagery and it's perverse-while-poetic
direction. And Pep Tosar's body language. Even his facial expressions
are muted do the fact that he wears a surgical mask the entire time
(though what little we do see of his face is often expressive enough to
get the character across). With all this pressure on him, it would be
easy for Pep's performance to be the weak link in this film. But it's
not. While not flashy or extravagant, Pep's movements accomplish the
task of allowing us insight into the soul of the silent, warped
character he embodies. The casualness with which Pep's character
approaches his acts of horrifying debauchery, which include not just
molesting and raping the corpse of the dead woman but also taking home
her heart and feeding it to his dog, is masterfully put across to the
audience by Tosar's body language. It's vile, sickening, and profoundly
perturbing to experience the callous ease-of-stride that the coroner in
question operates with, and I have to hand it to Pep Tosar for his
performance. 
The film's final shot is perhaps the most harsh. As the unnamed morgue
technician we've watched commit so many degrading acts of necrophilia
settles in at home in his slippers and pajamas, the camera pans past
and closes in on one of the discarded newspaper pages that line the
floor around his dog's food dish. Just before the screen goes black we
are shown what we know is a Spanish obituary for the girl whose body
our perverse coroner had so casually violated and defiled. It reminds
that although she is now no more than a piece of rotting meat,
painfully open and exposed to the cruelties that the world has to
offer, that corpse was once a human being. A person. A young woman with
emotions, hopes, fears, and dreams. It reminds us of the sobering
brutality and finality of death and that the only afterlife we are
guaranteed involves a cold steel cot and whatever the whims of our
overseers hold for us. We live. We love. But in the end we always wind
up at the mercy of clumsy gloved hands with strange, curious, probing,
foreign fingers. It is a dark message for sure, but it is also a
truthful one.
If you're a fan of the "Guinea Pig" films then definitely give "Aftermath" a whirl. It really does feel like a less campy, more intellectual version of a "Guinea Pig" picture. Like I said, its shot artfully and skillfully and it is highly intense, enveloping, and moving in a "shit, that was some disturbing stuff right there" kind of way. |                    |
