Reaction & Review | Dead Space: Aftermath

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering an animated movie from 2011. That movie is "Dead Space: Aftermath".

Now, a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the first, and only other, "Dead Space" animated movie from 2008. And I thought it was...kinda average, at best. It wasn't really horrible, but it wasn't anything special, either. It certainly did felt like I was watching something that came from the "Dead Space" video game series. But the things that held it back for me were the characters feeling very shallow and lifeless, the CG, at least when it comes to stuff such as ships, looked like it came from the late 90's, and Jim Cummings turning in the worst performance of his entire voice acting career. Which is something that I still didn't think was possible, but that movie proved to me that Jim Cummings is not immune to sucking every once and a while.

So now we have this movie, which, much like the first movie, is another tie-in to the Dead Space video game series. And from what little I do know about the plot, it takes place shortly after events of the first game. So I'm kinda curious to see where they go from there. Now, something else about this movie seems a little bit odd. You see, when I decided to cover both of the Dead Space animated movies, I was gonna watch both of them on YouTube. And I did that with the first movie. The second movie, though, I had to watch it somewhere else online. The reason why revolves around the movie's questionable runtime. See, the version on YouTube that I found runs at about 71 minutes long, which I didn't really think much of at the time. But when I started to do the minimal amount of research going into this movie, I found on Google that the movie itself has a runtime of 90 minutes. So, I had to abandon that idea and find the movie on another site that I could watch it on. And the only version that I could find was on Tubi TV, which is where I'm gonna be watching the movie tonight on.

Now you might be thinking that since I found the movie on a different website, everything's fine, right? Well...not exactly. See, when I was trying to find the movie on a different site to watch it from, just about everyone of them was advertising this movie to run about 77 minutes long. And yet, as I mentioned earlier, the runtime that I found when I first looked this movie up on Google, it stated that the film's runtime was 90 minutes long. So, I gotta ask: Where's the rest of the footage? If it's really 90 minutes long, where exactly is the rest of the footage that claims that it's running at about 90 minutes long, so that way, I can go and watch it from there? Normally, guys, I usually complain about a movie's runtime if it's running shorter than usual, or if the movie feels too long, but very rarely, do I ever complain about a movie where I can't find the rest of the footage that's supposed to be the runtime that it was trying to advertise itself to be.

But anyway...I'm gonna try to ignore all that, because, regardless of the movie's questionable runtime, I can at least still watch it. So, there is that. And I'm hoping for it to be pretty good. I don't know if that's gonna be the case or not, but who knows? This movie could surprise me in some way. And the way only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is even worth watching at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Dead Space: Aftermath".

6 minutes later

Guys, I understand it's still early for me to be saying this, but I have to comment on this movie's usage of CG. Everything, so far, from the armored soldiers, the ships, everything regarding that looks great...at least, until I get to see models for some of the human faces and the way that they move looks really off-putting and ugly. And the worst part about this is that I'm probably gonna have to get use to these ugly models for the next hour and 10 minutes or so.

6 minutes later

So hold on a fucking second here! This entire flashback that Kuttner is having is being told through traditional animation. And just based off the minute that I'm seeing it here, this animation looks really fucking good. Why the hell aren't we getting this kind of animation throughout the entire movie instead of that god-awful-looking CG that I just witnessed earlier?! That makes no sense at all, guys.

12 minutes later

You know, guys, I really wish I had more to say, regarding the story and everything, but I still can't get over how truly awful the CG looks, each time that this movie switches back from traditional animation to CG. I know I've kept beating this horse so far, but trust me when I say that I'm gonna have plenty to talk about when it comes to this movie's animation by the time the film's done.

8 minutes later

All right, that was something new. We just had two people killed by lava fire, and that second death basically involved that guy having lava fire bursting out from his helmet. That was actually really, cool. I will say that much.

30 seconds later

And I just saw someone getting squished by a piece of the planet's rocks in a pretty bloody fashion. That was actually even cooler than the death I just saw a moment ago. So yeah, this movie definitely knows how to kill it's characters off in a brutal fashion.

15 minutes later

I'm really sorry, guys, that I have to keep mentioning this, but it's about the animation again. I am gonna say that this type of animation that I'm seeing right now looks awesome. It seriously is the most detailed type of animation I've seen up to this point. But with that, it's also showing a LOT of inconsistencies with it's design choices. And I'll explain more about that when this film is done. Again, I really wish I had more to say about the quality of the film's story, but the animation is what's really holding me back here from doing that.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Dead Space: Aftermath". Let me shut the movie off here...OK. Um...dear lord, where do I even start with this movie?

You know what? I know EXACTLY what I want to start with. I've been beating this horse throughout this entire Reaction & Review, so I may as well start with the biggest problem that this movie has. Let's start with the animation. I'm going to assume that this movie was meant to act as an anthology film. Because we're seeing these perspectives of what happened after the disastrous events of the Aegis 7 from the four surviving members of our main characters that we're suppose to follow. And through these events, we get different types of traditional animation that goes along with how their stories play out. And all of that sounds fascinating...IF it were an actual anthology film. However, from what little research I did on this movie, there was no mention at all about this movie being an anthology film. It plainly advertises itself as a pure sci-fi horror movie. So because of that, I am not going to count this as a traditional anthology film, because most anthology films usually have their own stories and segments that normally don't have any connections with each other, outside of having some kind of framing device. This movie is telling a straight-laced story with characters that are explaining the events of what happened after the first Dead Space game that all connect with each other through different types of animation. And honestly, if we constantly didn't switch back and forth from the god-awful CG to the different types of 2D animation, and we had just stuck solely with the 2D animation, I wouldn't have had very many problems with it. But because this movie decided to go with different animation styles, I have to make it the top priority first, because it honestly brings down most of, if not the entire movie. At least, for me, anyway.

To begin with, let's start with the horrendous CG. If you'll recall my review of "Dead Space: Downfall", the issues I had with the CG in that movie mostly consisted of the ships and some of the interior designs of it looking like it came out of the late 90's. Well...it's looking a hell of a lot better now, especially when compared to the god-awful CG that was utilized for this movie. This kind of CG looks like the kind of shit that resembles the mid-90's cartoons that were trying to experiment with CG animation. Shit, guys, "Beast Wars" had better fucking CG animation than this shit did. But then again, "Beast Wars" also had better designs that stayed consistent from episode to episode, and was also decently animated for it's time. Sure, it's dated by today standards, however, "Beast Wars" also came out in 1996. This son of a bitch, on the other hand was released in 2011! There is no excuse to have CG that looks this fucking bad. The only two bright spots to come out of the CG animation for this movie are the armored soldiers and the ships. Everything else looks like shit. The models on the human's faces look terrible, the mouth movements look kinda janky, and when compared to the traditional animation that's used for the different segments, it looks even WORSE. Especially in certain moments where the character designs don't really stay consistent with each other.

In fact, let's go straight into the next big issue with this movie's animation: the inconsistencies. Oh dear heavenly fuck, where the hell do I even start with this...? Well, let's begin with the character designs. Now, as I stated earlier, this movie's trying to present itself by having our main characters tell the events of what happened during the Aegis 7 incident through their perspectives, thus is how we get the different types of 2D animation for these segments. And I will say that all of these 2D segments are animated very well, and the art style for each of these segments looks really good. But then comes the switch between the animation styles, and that's where the inconsistencies come in. I mentioned earlier about how the human faces on the CG models look terrible. And that's because most of, if not all of them have no wrinkles on their faces. You may get BRIEF glimpses of it, but for the most part, wrinkles on the characters faces in CG don't exist. But in each of the traditionally animated segments, all of our main characters have some kind of wrinkles on their faces, thus making it look a little more realistic in detail. The only thing that's present on the CG models is when you get to see some blood splatter on two of them. But everyone else looks plain as hell. The only character that comes even close to staying consistent from CG to traditional animation is Alejandro. The two things that make him stand out about his model are the fact that he has a little bit of facial hair under his lip, and that he has one arm missing, which is briefly explained in his own segment. The only real inconsistency during his segment is that, apparently, he went from being a Caucasian in the first segment to having mostly brown skin in the second segment. Which is rather odd, considering that the rest of the segments involving him, he mostly stayed as a Caucasian. But beyond that, he mostly stays consistent with his design.

But as for everyone else...no. Kuttner, who is the only black guy on the team, apparently had a muscular change from the last segment from 2D to CG, because during the CG segments that he's in, his muscular structure is almost non-existent. Where in the last 2D segment, his muscle structure made him looked like he had recently been to the gym, because he was PACKED with muscles. His dead daughter also went from wearing a white dress and having long hair from the first segment to having a pigtail and pink overalls in the CG segment. So that's one pair of inconsistencies involving him. Isabel's only inconsistency comes from at the end of Nolan Stoss's perspective, in which she had a light pinkish eyeliner that was applied to her. In the rest of the segments that she was in, the eyeliner is completely non-existent. So why the hell she needed it to begin with is beyond my understanding. Speaking of Stross, he has the most inconsistencies out of all our main characters. And it mostly has to do with his hair. You see, in the CG segments, he's shown to have brown hair with a few spikes pointing downwards. But in the rest of the stories, his hair changes a lot. In the first two segments, he had black hair. But by the third and fourth segment, he apparently had a 5 o'clock shadow, because before then, there was NO indication that he had any kind of facial hair whatsoever. Also, from between the first two stories and the latter two stories, he apparently had the same problem as Alejandro, in which his skin color also changes from him being white to having brown skin. So yeah, out of all the main characters that had drastic character designs, Stross is the one who mostly had an identity crisis.

But that's not compared to the one character who could not stay consistent throughout this entire movie. That dishonor goes to the captain. You see, the captain in this movie has one major character trait that makes him stand out the most. Which would be his scar that is present around his left eye. In the first segment, he's shown to have one big scar that almost looks like a lightning bolt. In the second segment, the scar he has changes to just almost looking like a straight line. You can KINDA see there is a small curve there, but it's still mostly a straight line. The third segment, however, changes that COMPLETELY! Because, and I'm not kidding when I say this, his scar is completely gone! Like, what the fuck happened to his scar?! Did he just magically get it healed at some point that I wasn't made aware of? I don't know what happened, but that shit completely threw me off, because that's the one thing that made him recognizable. And the saddest part about that is that the third segment, as I mentioned earlier, has some of the most detailed 2D animation I have seen in a long time. And yet, so for some dumbass reasoning, the animators couldn't be asked to give him a scar that made this one character stand out. Oh, but don't worry! Because in the fourth segment, his scar is present once again on him, as if to quickly correct what was missing from him in the third segment. So don't worry about the bizarre reasoning as to WHY his scar went completely missing from the third segment, it's back in the fourth segment as if it never truly went away.

Good god, guys...I have not spent this much time talking about animation before in a movie. But this movie is the one exception where the animation actually kinda breaks the movie here. I honestly would've not minded having different types of animation for these segments, if not for the fact that NOBODY tried to stay a little bit consistent with these character designs. And it probably would've been a lot better, too, if we had scrapped the god-awful CG animation and stuck with the 2D animation. If they seriously wanted to work in CG, at least stick it with shit like the ships and such, much like the first movie did. Sure, the CG wasn't great in the first Dead Space movie, but at least it didn't interfere too much with the 2D animation that was present there. This thing, however, does not work with the changing of animation styles. Like I just said, either stick with one type of animation (preferably traditional), or stay fucking consistent with your character designs. Otherwise, you get all the problems that are present within this movie.

So...with that all said, let's finally get into the writing. I will say that, on a narrative perspective, this movie's premise is perfectly fine. As I mentioned before, it's about four surviving members talking about the events of what happened after the events involving the Aegis 7 and how severely fucked up it was, since Kuttner was the one who technically started all this, mostly because of his dead daughter that he still laments. So much so that when he first find remnants of the Artifact that he gains possession of, he begins to lose his mind due to the corruption coming from it. And from there, it all goes downhill, as everyone else recounts the events from their perspectives. So again, on a narrative perspective, the movie's actually OK. Admittedly, it's not really explained as to how Kuttner's daughter died. Maybe she died from an attack from the Necromorphs, but who knows? But anyway, I will also say that the characters, even though they were mostly kinda shallow and flat, still had a little bit of energy and life to their characters. Granted, that's not a saying a whole lot, considering that there weren't any characters worth caring about in the first movie, but I can at least see that this movie tried to put in that small amount of effort into making these characters stand out a bit. However, the downside to all this is that since this movie is tied into the Dead Space video games, any newcomers to this series will probably be totally lost as to what's going on here. So on that end, if you seriously want to get into the Dead Space series without having to play the games first, then your best bet would be to try and watch the first animated Dead Space movie before you dive right into this one.

Now as for the acting, well...it's OK. I mean, it's not great by any stretch, but I certainly wouldn't call it terrible. I would say it's almost on par with the first movie's acting, where they're both decent. I may give the acting a slight edge here to this one, mostly because of Jim Cumming's performance in the first movie being complete shit. So overall, the acting here is decent for what it is. I've already talked about the animation in far greater detail than I already have, so there's obviously no reason to go into that again. The sound-mix here is mixed fine. The music here is, mostly, very forgettable. I couldn't really think of anything that stood out to me, other than Kuttner's dead daughter singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Which sounded kinda terrible, to be honest with you. But other than that, the music here is nothing to write home about.

So yeah, guys...when all is said and done, can I recommend "Dead Space: Aftermath"? Oh dear lord, um...honestly...shit, this is actually really difficult to recommend. Well, again, if you really want to get into these two animated movies, then your best bet would be to start off with "Dead Space: Downfall" before you watch this one. But honestly, the one thing that may hold you back from ever watching this thing is the interchangeable styles of animation that this movie goes through. That, coupled with the fact that the character designs are very inconsistent between the traditionally animated segments will almost definitely pull you out of the movie. And by that point, I would just say go play the first Dead Space video game and just ignore these movies entirely. Unless if you're, somehow, a die-hard fan of this series, then there's absolutely no reason for you to watch these movies. You can easily skip them and you wouldn't be missing a thing. I, personally, won't be watching these movies a second time, because neither of them are really even that good anyways. At least, to me, they're not. Oh, and more one thing. If you seriously have to watch this movie, do not watch it on Tubi TV like I foolishly did. Why? Because there were ads that popped up at least 3 or 4 different times as the movie went on, and they were all unskippable. Go find it on DVD or Blu-ray, because at least you won't get interrupted by unnecessary ads. But that's only if you seriously want to risk spending money buying these movies. Which I won't, thankfully, because both these movies are just that forgettable. Now...I'm gonna go and watch a proper anthology movie. I think I'll go and re-watch my copy of "Batman: Gotham Knight". Which, in my opinion, is a much better constructed anthology film, and is miles better than what I just watched for the last hour, almost hour and a half, what with the retarded ads and all.

And with that, guys, we finally come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.