There has been no word on when this film will release overseas. The argument that if you were not born in the US you can’t see the movie is preposterous. Not everybody can be born in the US. It’s physically impossible, geographically impossible (just imagine the logistics of beaming up countless pregnant mothers all over the world to America every second and the unimaginable pressure it would put on the maternity wards of American hospitals merely on account of unavailability of a movie). The upshot: we can’t see After Last Season. Consequently, there can’t be any review here. But for the benefit of the EF, who have stayed by me through thick and thin, I’ll have to resort to finger-pointing. At other reviews. Other opinions. Please feel free to be enlightened. Here I go:
Finally, the banana is out of the bag.
Kind souls have trudged to the movie and gushed about it. Praise be upon them.
Here’s what Rodney Perkins has to say in his review:
Technically, After the Last Season, which was shot on 35mm, is all over the place. The colors, and perhaps the stock, changes between shots, and even within single scenes. Some scenes are perceptibly out-of-focus. There is a pervasive, muffled background noise. Scenes come and go with no continuity or explanation. Conversations often cutaway to shots of furniture and other items for no reason. A large part of the movie consists of the previously mentioned computer graphics, which are brutally crude. Although these graphics fit into the story, film leans heavily on them to pad out the 93 minute running time. Thus, the parade of colored circles, cylinders, birds, and fish tends to goes on and on as if the film went on pause and a screen-saver kicked in.
This review has expended hundreds of words in an attempt to convey the nature of After the Last Season but this is a film that requires direct experience to comprehend. Even then, its mysteries will not completely reveal themselves.
And this from Scott Von Doviak’s slightly excitable review:
One thing is for sure – contrary to speculation that the inexplicable trailer and inscrutable plot description offered on the website was some sort of viral marketing scheme on behalf of an entirely different movie – After Last Season is real. All the snippets seen in the trailer are included in the film, though they make no more sense in context than they did in abbreviated form. The movie opens in the MRI room of a hospital, although just as is evident from the trailer, we are clearly in somebody’s house, in a room with pink walls and a ceiling fan, with a cardboard MRI scanner covered with construction paper in the corner. Deliberate Brechtian alienation device? Cynical attempt at creating a “so bad it’s good” cult hit a la Tommy Wiseau’s The Room? Or earnest effort by staggeringly untalented individuals who have somehow managed to make a singular film that is at once intensely boring, thoroughly disorienting and so technically incompetent it achieves several deeply unnerving effects entirely by accident?
A bit harsh, I think, but to each his owl.
And finally, the Filmmaker guys have been able to snag an interview with the master himself! Here’s director Mark Region talking about the controversial MRI sequence:
Filmmaker: Some viewers have thought that because some of the props, like the MRI machine or the newspaper, are so clearly not realistic that perhaps the film itself is playing with the concept of realism — that maybe you have deliberately created a world that is more minimalist or abstract than our own.
Mark Region: The way it happened, first we made the MRI, and it looked pretty good from far away. We couldn’t tell it was made from cardboard or bits of plastic – it also has plastic. But when you shoot with 35mm, and sometimes because of the light, some lines across the front of the MRI became visible. When we shot, we couldn’t tell, but on film the lines are darker — you see it’s not a polished surface. That’s how the MRI came to be.
About the inimitable dialogues:
Filmmaker: Another aspect of the film that’s been talked about is the nature of the dialogue, which often talks about directions from one location to another, or the geography of one place or room to another. Why are these seemingly obscure or random statements so prevalent in the film as opposed to dialogue that might reveal the emotions of the characters or more clearly advance the story?
Mark Region: I tried to keep the dialogue simple because we had little time to shoot the scenes. I wanted to make the dialogue realistic. The dialogue would be something that you would hear in a normal conversation. This type of dialogue also serves as a contrast to the intense and disturbing parts of the film.
(I just wish we had some kind of picture or sketch or hologram of Mr Region’s to go with this. An interview without a mug feels, somehow, naked… and we are not running a nudist colony here, people, if you are on the internet you gotta expose your face, bring it to the table!)
On the Facebook front, the newly minted I believe in After Last Season group has this really poignant comment:
Thanks for the info Jason. I’m going to see it with my girlfriend on Thursday. I really feel like this movie should be experienced in the theatre.
In my book, that’s a boyfriend ripe for respect…
Rumours have been floating around that prints of After Last Season are going to be destroyed. And that too on the orders of Mark Region! Ties in with my observation in the earlier post about Mr Region’s dubious intentions. A dedicated vigil is the need of the hour.
Another set of rumours has it that the laxative industry is closely following the fortunes of After Last Season. Exactly what kind of people are these laxative honchos? Don’t they have any ethics? Disgusting.
Finally, an SOS. Please release film on Youtube immediately. There are so many fans outside the US who want to savour this delicacy and relieve themselves.
(Of anxiety, A N X I E T Y, what else did you think?!)
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For those who came in late again, the trailer:
