Aftershock (2012)

I think I've just seen one of the most depressing and mean-spirited films I've seen in a while, and considering my track record with these sorts of films, that's saying something.

Aftershock is a film produced by Eli Roth, co-written by Eli Roth, and starring Eli Roth. So it's safe to say that Eli Roth had a hand in this film, and it's also safe to say that some of his signatures are also all over it. It's about three friends in Chile - one is on holiday there, the other two are natives - who are out to meet women and do so at a nightclub one night. They decide to stay together, and the next night visit an underground nightclub that is supposed to be one of the hottest events there. Then an earthquake happens. And then things go from bad, to worse, to oh dear gods why bother going on.

Now don't get me wrong. I have a not-so secret love of disaster films. I grew up on The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure and came out with only minimal mental scarring. But one of the key points of the disaster movie genre (at least in my opinion) is the hope that things will get better for the plucky survivors whose struggles to survive we're following. OJ Simpson will get that cat to safety! Gene Hackman will lead the survivors to the bottom of the boat and therefore the surface! It makes us feel better when we see people survive this kind of adversity, while also reinforcing our secret fears about ocean liners, skyscrapers, glass lifts and using lifts at all during fires. But Aftershock doesn't give us this. Instead we watch as, one by one, the main characters are brutalised and taken out one by one until it feels more like we're watching a slasher movie where Jason Voorhees has been replaced by an earthquake, a prison break and more besides.

I didn't go into the film with any false expectations either. I knew it was Eli Roth; I knew it was going to be pretty shocking and extreme. But I still wasn't expecting the level of... meanness that the film gave us. Meanness and some pretty transparent plot twists, actually. There's one moment in the film where I saw exactly what was going on and what was going to happen, and yet it still took an extra half-hour or so before the rest of the (surviving) cast knew and even then it wasn't a shock.

It also piled a lot of contrivances on top of each other and expected us to accept them all. Earthquake in an underground club causing utter carnage, yes. Risk of tsunami afterwards, yes. Earthquake also just happening to destroy the nearby prison to let out all the gangmembers who, instead of getting the hell out of Dodge, decide it's time to go on a rape and murder spree? This is where I have to draw the line. (Also for those sensitive to those sorts of scenes, be warned - there's a very unpleasant scene that I found very uncomfortable to watch, and I'm not triggered by that sort of thing.)

So yeah, I'm not 100% sure what I make of Aftershock. I watched it to the end, but that was more out of horrified determination to see how it ended than any actual enjoyment of the film. I can see it appealing to fans of Eli Roth, or those who like a certain bleakness in their movies, but it just left me feeling slightly unwell. And that's a pretty difficult thing to do.