Aftershock is an insane movie about a single earthquake in Chile and has a combination of comedy, horror and disaster movie themes. It starts off like Hostel (2005), with Eli Roth writing the script alongside Guillermo Amoedo and director Nicolas Lopez. These three men want girls, parties, alcohol and more fun just like any other person who goes to South America for vacation.
Here, they are Chileans Ariel (Ariel Levy) and Pollo (Nicolas Maretinez) along with their American friend Gringo (Roth himself), who lacks creativity while naming him. These young men’s escapades have the nature of Sideways combined with The Hangover as they start at a winery but soon find themselves in various festivities as well as clubs. Even though newly-single Gringo repels women at every opportunity that he gets – including Selena Gomez making the most unexpected cameo appearance – they still make friends with some very attractive ladies.
So after endless party scenes featuring this group, the trio moves on to Valparaiso, which is a place situated on the coast where Russian model Irina (Natasha Yarovenko), party animal Kylie (Lorenza Isso), and her more straight-laced sister Monica (Andrea Osvart) join them.
That is when a major catastrophe occurs through an earthquake that completely ruins everything, thereby allowing Lopez to use gore extensively as he shows falling structures or people being trampled upon. Each one of the main characters leaves the club in different states of health, after which we follow their efforts to escape from death raining down on Valparaiso. That’s before even considering the tsunami.
Aftershock does not avoid facing up to what really happens in natural catastrophes during these moments—both our heroes lose each other and lose limbs; everyone runs for his/her life; panic rules streets. In fact, if Aftershock carried on like this, questioning the nature of heroism and setting it against self-preservation, it might make a good horror film.
But that wasn’t the film that the filmmakers wanted; instead another twist in the plot comes when a gang of escaped inmates from a local insane asylum invades the town to loot, rape, riot and kill. And although their presence does increase the tackiness of this movie – leading to anarchy as well as chaos – yes but they also give it a viscerally nasty and mean close which includes one particularly sadistic sexual assault.
Survival horror only begins here as character development during its early sequences means you almost want these guys to win. For different reasons, this is more distressing and less fascinating for what happens to them.
Lopez keeps up with these moving actions although aided by Manuel Riveiro’s great music soundtrack plus several powerful performances especially by Matinez and Osvart.
Verdict
Nonetheless, playground humour and graphic horror are an awkward combination. The constant and dramatic changes in tone seem artificial since they shift between the sublime, offensive and ridiculous which is tiring and irritating.
but playground humor & graphic horror make strange bedfellows: rather, the tonal shifts are too constant and histrionic – change of sublimity to offensiveness to absurdity itself becomes wearisome & maddening. However, it means that this film stumbles at the last hurdle because of absence of narrative consistency, Aftershock was a solid, original midnight movie offering but it could have been so much more.
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