Dead Space: Aftermath (2011) Reviews

• Dead in the water

  xamtaro2011-02-10

  Film Roman is at it again. This time, they have gone back to the "Dead Space" Franchise and crafted yet another prequel similar to their prior work on the prequel to Dead Space 1 called "Dead Space Downfall". Dead space Aftermath is a loose prequel to Dead Space 2 that utilizes the "animatrix technique" of having different animation studios do different segments of the show. While Dead Space downfall was not exactly an animation Masterpiece, Dead Space Aftermath takes it all down a notch. Set after the events of Dead Space 1, The USS O'Bannon is sent to the planet Aegis VII to prevent it from destabilizing. This is a cover for their true mission of retrieving fragments of an alien artifact presumed destroyed in the first game. Contact is lost with the O'Bannon until it is rescued by a team of space marines. Within, they find a hell house of mutilated horrors only four survivors who are promptly captured and taken for interrogation. As each survivor reveals the horrific events that transpired on the O'Bannon, each of their flashbacks are rendered in four unique Korean animation styles from some of the teams that worked on Dante's Inferno: an Animated Epic. The problem here is that unlike Dante's Inferno which had a central character that was developed over the course of the movie, Dead Space Aftermath has four central characters that remain one dimensional and wholly forgettable throughout. They are typical stock characters seen before in so many space based horror movies. The "present day" framing story footage is rendered in cel shaded CGI by South Korean "Digiart productions" and "Fx Gear studios", the company that made that cringe worthy "Shark Tale" ripoff called "Shark Bait". While the rendering on spaceships and the Marine suits in the dark look quite good, the human characters set against the detail-less backgrounds look like they belong in the late 90s. Movements are stiff and lifeless, hair looks like play-dough worms, clothing folds are non existent and the flat colors just make it all worse. It looks less like Appleseed and more like the worst episodes of Jimmy Neutron or Clone Wars. The flashbacks too are of varying quality. THey each detail different parts of the doomed mission from the characters' individual point of views and it is up to the audience to piece it together for the whole story. The different animation styles and slight inconsistencies actually work here as they represent the highly subjective and bias prone nature of personal recollection. For example, the strong willed Doctor Cho sees herself as this tall leggy hot babe in her flashback while Stross sees her, his extramarital girlfriend, as a manipulative slut with heavy make-up in his flashback. First up is the mentally unstable token big black man, Kuttner, who suffers from hallucinations of his dead daughter. It is done in a decent American-ish art style with good quality animation by Dong Woo Animation studio (Masters of the Universe 2002, Ultimate Avengers) and Tokyo Anime Award winner Tae Ho-Han (Africa a.F.r.I.c.A). Stargate SG1's Christopher Judge masterfully portrays the broken man pushed over the edge of despair and desperation. Its only flaw would be the extremely slow first half which is all talk and no tension. Boring. Next is a flashback courtesy of the stereotypical tough guy, Borges, who seems to alternate between being Hispanic or white with each new segment. Curiously, his version of his scuffle with Kuttner shows him putting up a decent fight while in Kuttner's version, Borges went down in seconds. Anyway, this segment is done by the same team who also did the "Fraud" level segment of Dante's Inferno(JM Animation studio and Kim Sang Jin), arguably one of that film's worse looking segments. Borges' flashback is also the worse looking here. A higher level of art detail and rich colors is offset with unnatural character movements, some animation shortcuts and ugly anime-styled character designs (what big teeth they have) which tend to go off model. Not to mention the CGI ships and fake looking flames effects which clash horribly with the traditional 2D animation. Stross, the half crazed scientist having an affair with Dr Cho, is the third flashback. Jong Sik Nam and Dong Woo Animation, who did Batman Gothma Knight's Deadshot segment and the "Lust" segment of Dante's Inferno, present the most fluidly animated Dead Space Aftermath flashback. The atmospheric colors, creative shot angles and highly detailed artwork (a cross between Aeon Flux and typical Korean Anime) add a dynamic touch to Stross' brush with artifact induced insanity. THe tension and action finally amps itself up, but if feels a little late. The segment's only shortcoming is in some obviously unfinished background art. Doctor Cho's flashback connects the O'Bannon mission back to the opening scene of the movie. This one is, while not the worst, a mixed bag. Cho's voice actress has a tendency to over act a lot to the point of cheesiness. The animation is rife with short cuts and "jitter camera" effects while stylized character designs look like dragonball Z rejects, all overly beefy and stuff. But at least it had a high level of detail and some good action. The varying quality of the entire movie makes giving a rating hard.Two great segments are offset by three not so great ones. It lacks the deeper philosophical themes and character development of Dante's Inferno. It also lacks the straight forward violence, plot consistency and sense of tension of Dead Space downfall. Ultimately the entire production feels mediocre and lifeless, almost as if Film Roman could not afford better CGI artists or first rate studios animation like Manglobe or Production IG. The story is inconsequential in its lead in to Dead Space 2 and filled with a lot of wasted potential.

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• "They think they can control this?"

  lost-in-limbo2012-06-08

  I've played the games, but wasn't religiously hooked by them. The first feature "Downfall" was decent, but "Aftermath" would only be more of the same. Where this entry fits in would be a sequel to "Dead Space" the EA video game and its animated feature prequel "Dead Space: Downfall". What are happening in "Aftermath" are the events that occur before the second game "Dead Space 2". Earth has lost contact with the Ishimura ship and engineer Isaac Clarke, but now it's the responder ship the USG O'Bannon with only four crew members returning and we get the perspective views of these survivors of what just occurred on this mission in locating and securing an alien artefact. Secrets are kept, shady dealings are instigated and true intentions are revealed. You know… corporations with their big plans as they interrogate the four survivors. Its pulp, but entertaining… albeit the compounded plot is kind of a mish mash of ideas, which don't entirely gel and has been done numerous times before. You could say it's rather talky with theories chucked about. The first feature "Downfall" stuck to one type of animation, but this one experimented with a mixture of styles which I wasn't much of a fan. However it was just as graphic and ruthless with its nightmarish illustrations, but the atmospheric eeriness and brute intensity only lasted in pockets due to it not taking a straightforward approach with its narrative. Pretty much it starts at the end, to retell the story from form four different viewpoints mixing the animation with that. The voice work is acceptably good. "Aftermath" is nothing special, but just another chapter to the "Dead Space" universe. "I need a test subject."

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• A mixture of art styles that didn't work well together...

  paul_haakonsen2012-07-01

  Not being familiar with any of the "Dead Space" games, or the first animated movie, I have nothing to compare this to, so this is all by what I thought of this 2011 animation. "Dead Space: Aftermath" had a nice enough story and it was easy to follow. The story is about a small group of four survivors who are rescued after a tragic occurrence, but now they have to tell their stories to people who seem to have little regards for their well-being. As I said, not being familiar with anything prior to this animated movie, then I have no idea how true or far from the original plot lines this movie is. The storyline was nice and well told. However, the solid storyline was brought down tremendously as they had opted to use various styles of animation and art styles. Most of these, sadly enough, were not in my personal liking, and thus it brought down the enjoyment of the movie for me. Especially the CGI animation, that was just horrendous. It looked like it was released before they had applied the finishing touches to it. In my opinion, then "Dead Space: Aftermath" would have fared better had they opted to stay with just one style of art and animation (in my opinion, the style they used when they were telling doctor Cho's story). As for the voice acting, well then I think they really did manage to put together a good group of people for the voice acting. So that was really working out well for the movie. I am sure that this 2011 animated movie is a great thing for fans of the games, but it failed to fully ensnare and captivate me. I am giving "Dead Space: Aftermath" a 5/10 rating because of the story alone, the different art styles and animation styles was the knife that killed it off for me.

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• Forgettable

  IDontRideBarrels2014-01-21

  Overall this is a fairly mediocre film. It's short, under 80 minutes, so it's not a waste of time even if you hate it. Dead Space: Downfall is much better even though it's 3 years older. The plot is more cohesive and so is the animation style, a very important aspect. While there can be some complaints about the plot in Aftermath (mostly regarding repetition), it's reasonably decent, and the biggest complaint is the visual aspect. The film is divided into multiple parts and each is made differently - some with 2D animation and some with 3D animation. The 3D is completely awful despite the lighting (inexcusably worse than cutscenes from some PS1 games) and the 2D is weird in the last portion (not objectively BAD, but the style isn't fitting and heavily conflicts with previous sections). Most people would probably rate this as a 7 or 8 if Aftermath used the first part's 2D animation throughout. If you're a fan of Dead Space it's probably worth watching Aftermath, but I wouldn't recommend it; I'd recommend Downfall instead. It's not amazing, but it's much better than Aftermath in all aspects.

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• A bad prequel/sequel

  Criticman122011-05-14

  Dead Space: Aftermath, is a prequel to, Dead Space 2, and a sequel to, Dead Space: Downfall. The story is about a group of survivors that are taken in and interrogated where people want to know about the artifact they discovered. The voice acting and the 2D animation were good. But everything else, was bad. The CG animation was terrible, the story wasn't that good and the movie was mostly boring. In the end, you're better off playing the video game's or watching, Dead Space: Downfall.

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