Dead Space Aftermath (2011)

The End was only the Begining
Director: Mike Disa
Writer: Brandon Auman
Stars: Christopher Judge and Peter Woodward

Dead Space Aftermath is the story of four survivors from the USG O'Bannon, but to get the most out of their tale, you need to know how the original Dead Space game ended. In short, engineer Isaac Clarke destroyed an alien artifact known as the Marker that was creating monsters called Necromorphs. After the Marker was wiped off the face of Aegis VII, the planet began to come apart at the seams. 

In Aftermath, the crew of the O'Bannon lands on Aegis VII. Half the squad is there to stabilize the planet while the other half is there to collect Marker fragments. Of course, as we've previously discussed, the Marker makes monsters and drives people insane, so things go to hell as soon as the first piece is found.

Where Dead Space Aftermath excels is in its storytelling. The movie doesn't play out in chronological order. Instead, we start with the survivors being saved and are then treated to their personal accounts of what the heck happened down there. Each character is ushered into an interrogation room and exposed to their greatest fear. This leads to them spilling their guts. These stories are interesting, intertwined and gruesome. You'll see how one person loses his mind from his perspective and then get to see the seemingly random attack from another. It heightens the tension as you know terrible moments are just around the corner. For the most part, I liked all the characters, too, although the dude crying about his daughter is a bit one dimensional.

Each story is told in a different animation style. This disjointed style has turned me off to similar productions – Batman: Gotham Knight – but it works here thanks to some contextual choices. The objective part of the story (the crew on the interrogation ship) is told in a sterile, computer-animated style. When the movie first started, I though it looked rather cheap, but then each crewmember's memory is animated like a more traditional cartoon. Having that sterile, simple anchor works for branching out into these different works. I dig it as the setup gives the skewed stories a personal edge both in terms of content and context.

The downside here – and the fact that would make me recommend renting this instead of buying it – is the fact that there's basically no value on the disc beyond the movie. There are no commentaries, no behind the scenes features, and no in-game content. You get the movie, which I enjoyed, and the ability to turn subtitles on. I don't think that's worth the price of this disc.

Still, I really enjoyed Dead Space Aftermath. It's violent and gruesome, but it also expands the Dead Space fiction without shoehorning in references to the games. There's no forced explanation of Unitology or drawn out story about the Marker. This is a story of four survivors and the horrors they saw. If you're not a Dead Space fan, you'll get an introduction to how effed-up the Marker makes everything. If you are a Dead Space fan, you're going to get information on plot elements that Dead Space 2 only references briefly and meet a character that's going to be extremely important to the series from here on forward.

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