Dead Space: Aftermath (2011)

While "Downfall" wasn't perfect, it was at least consistent. Much like when I watched "Gotham Kinght" earlier this year, the biggest flaw this film suffers from is it's inconsistency. The animation quality varies from sub-par CGI, to good, to hyper-realistic, to minimal. Was it really that difficult to stick to a single style of animation, or hell, tell a complete story? Granted after seeing "Downfall", there aren't a lot of surprises that can be offered here. People go crazy and kill each other, but at least "Downfall" was a whole story. This is 5 shorts combined into one movie, and while flashbacks would've worked, the constant changing of animation distracts from the story. This was made to fill in the gaps between "Dead Space" and it's sequel, but at the end of the day, there's not really a story to be told here.

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."

DEAD SPACE: AFTERMATH was a rather big disappointment compared to DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL, Even though DOWNFALL was no breakthrough epic in animation, it was still pretty good, it was more of a good versus evil type story and it managed to build tension through the use of great sound effects and had characters that you did grow to care about.In AFTERMATH you have a plot told in four different perspectives from four central characters, an approach to storytelling I'm not to particularly fond of because here the central characters are each interrogated and each time the action heats up we go back to the interrogation part where they bring in another character to be interrogated before we can get back to the main plot and every time this happens you'll find yourself going "Get on with it already." I admit I've only played the first DEAD SPACE so far but other reviewers have already said that the people who made this film probably didn't play the game, I'm inclined to agree with them.

The writing didn't make any sense. The story had nothing to do with the original. By the plot of this one I'd be surprised that anyone on the crew of this movie saw the original movie.In the Dead space - Downfall it was more a good vs. evil kind of theme, but in aftermath it just seemed like another poorly written 80's space horror movie. There was no resolve, the properties of artifact were rewritten for this movie in a less entertaining, and less interesting way.Whatever, I'm kinda cheesed that I wasted time watching this. I was hoping for some kind of cohesive connection between the two movies and I got nothing.