Author Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Killers Of The Flower Moon Wins In Austin

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, the Austin Film Critics Association announced their picks for the best of 2023!

The winners are listed in bold!

Best Picture
American Fiction
Barbie
Godzilla Minus One
The Holdovers
The Iron Claw
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Director
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Celine Song, Past Lives

Best Actress
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Hüller, Anatomy Of A Fall
Greta Lee, Past Lives
Margot Robbie, Barbie
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Andrew Scott, All Of Us Strangers
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Best Supporting Actor
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Charles Melton, May December
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Best Supporting Actress
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Julianne Moore, May December
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best Ensemble
Asteroid City
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Original Screenplay
Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, May December
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
David Hemingson, The Holdovers
Celine Song, Past Lives
Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy Of A Fall

Best Adapted Screenplay
Kelly Fremon Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
Tony McNamara, Poor Things
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon

Best Cinematography
Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
Matthew Libatique, Maestro
Rodrigo Prieto, Barbie
Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robbie Ryan, Poor Things

Best Editing
Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer
Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Poor Things
Thelma Schoonmaker, Killers of the Flower Moon
Kevin Tent, The Holdovers
Michelle Tesoro, Maestro

Best Original Score
Jerskin Fendrix, Poor Things
Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer
Daniel Pemberton, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon
Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, Barbie

Best International Film
Anatomy Of A Fall
The Boy and the Heron
Godzilla Minus One
The Taste of Things
The Zone of Interest

Best Documentary
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia
Four Daughters
Little Richard: I Am Everything
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

Best Animated Film
The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Suzume
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Best Voice Acting/Animated/Digital Performance
Bradley Cooper, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Ayo Edebiri, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Shameik Moore, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Chloë Grace Moretz, Nimona
Hailee Steinfeld, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Stunt Coordinator
Stephen Dunlevy & Scott Rogers, John Wick: Chapter 4
Wade Eastwood, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Chavo Guerrero, Jr., The Iron Claw
Crispin Layfield, Polite Society
Noon Orsatti, Extraction 2

Best First Film
Raine Allen-Miller, Rye Lane
Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou, Talk To Me
A.V. Rockwell, A Thousand And One
Celine Song, Past Lives

The Robert R. “Bobby” McCurdy Memorial Breakthrough Artist Award
Ayo Edebiri, Bottoms, Theater Camp, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Unknown Country, Fancy Dance, Quantum Cowboys
Abby Ryder Fortson, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Celine Song, Past Lives

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Monsters 1.15 “The Mother Instinct”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Tubi.

This week’s episode of Monsters is all about killer worms!

Agck!  Seriously, nothing freaks me out more than carnivorous creatures that slither around.  Obviously, most worms are too small to be dangerous and I assume the same can be sound of most snails.  Still, thought of giant worms bursting out of the ground and eating people …. I mean, obviously, it might make a good film but it’s not something that I would necessarily want to see in person.  If I ever saw something like that happens in my back yard, for instance, I would probably have to move to another house.  That would suck because I like this house.  Seriously, killer worms, stay away!

Anyway, where were we?  Oh yeah, the show….

Episode 1.15 “The Mother Instinct”

(Dir by Bette Gordon, originally aired on February 18th, 1989)

Nelson (Tom Gilory) is a real loser.  He’s a loser in business and a loser in life.  He’s got a gambling addiction and, despite being married to the loyal Sheila (Finn Carter), he simply cannot bring himself to remain faithful to his wife.  Nelson is in debt and desperately needs money.  His original plan is to ask his wealthy mother-in-law (Elizabeth Franz) for the money but she can see straight through him and refuses to give him a cent.

However, Nelson discovers that his mother-in-law has been growing melons in her green house that can provide temporary, superhuman strength.  (Usually, the mother-in-law is confined to a wheelchair but, whenever she drinks the super-powered melon juice, she can walk and literally toss people around her house.)  Nelson wants to steal the melons and sell them.  His mother-in-law refuses to give her permission so Nelson forces Sheila to help him steal them.

What Nelson didn’t expect was that the melons would be protected by carnivorous worms!  Nelson pressures Sheila to discover how her mother-in-law deals with the killer worms but it turns out that his mother-in-law has one last trick up her sleeve.  “Never miss with a mother’s instinct,” Nelson’s mother-in-law says as the episode reaches its tasty conclusion.

This episode suffered from being a bit rushed, which is something that happens when a show attempts to tell an hour-length story in only 20 minutes.  The killer worms were a bit too obviously puppet-like to really be scary but they still had their own silly charm to them.  Sometimes, you just have to be willing to accept that you’re watching a low-budget production and you need to just enjoy it for what it is.  Nelson was so obviously villainous that it made it difficult to believe that even insecure Sheila couldn’t see through him but at least he met his just deserts.

Incidentally, a year after appearing in this episode, Finn Carter starred in a movie that featured slightly more frightening killer worms, Tremors.

Catching Up With The Films of 2023: The Equalizer 3 (dir by Antoine Fuqua)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Robert McCall (Denzel Washington), the Equalizer, is killing people again.

This time, he goes to Sicily, where he invades a local winery, kills all of the guards, and then shoots the winery’s owner in the ass while the already wounded man pathetically crawls away.  Admittedly, everyone that McCall killed was bad and the winery owner would have killed McCall if things had worked differently but still, it’s an awful lot of death and violence just to retrieve some money that was stolen in a cyber-heist.

As McCall leaves the winery, he sees the owner’s young son and he declines to kill a child because, in the movies, adults only kill other adults.  Otherwise, the viewer might lose sympathy for them.  The kid, however, does not live under the rules of Hollywood so he grabs a shotgun from his father’s car and shoots McCall in the back.  McCall falls to the ground and attempts to shoot himself in the head.  However, his gun is out of bullets.

That’s right, our hero nearly shot himself in the head.  If he had succeeded, the movie would have been much shorter.  But since he wasted all of his bullets on the guards at the winery, McCall just passes out from the shock.  Eventually, he is found and taken to a village doctor named Enzo (Remo Girone).  Enzo removes the bullet.  When McCall awakens, Enzo asks him if he’s a good man or a bad man.  Enzo later says that McCall’s inability to answer was all the proof the he needed to know that McCall was a good a man.

McCall recuperates in the village and soon, he becomes an accepted member of the community.  He starts to contemplate leaving behind his life of violence and, in a well-done sequence, is haunted by the memory of how many people he killed at the winery.  But when the local Camorra starts to harass the villagers and threaten McCall’s new friends, it’s time for McCall to once again go to action.

If I sound a bit snarky, it’s because I’ve lost track of the number of films that I’ve seen about stoic former intelligence agents who kill a lot of people.  The Equalizer 3 is actually a well-made film, one that makes good use of its star’s charisma and the beautiful Sicilian scenery.  Denzel Washington isn’t getting any younger but he’s still believable as someone who could take down an army single-handedly and, even more importantly, he does a good job of portraying what a life of violence would do to a man’s soul.  Appropriately enough given the Sicilian setting, the film is full of religious imagery and The Equalizer 3, at its best, becomes a story about a man searching for redemption and a higher calling.

That said, the film is entertaining and it holds your interest (and I’m thankful that this is one mainstream film that does not feature an excessive running time) but the plot is undeniably formulaic and the villains aren’t particularly interesting.  There’s a subplot featuring Dakota Fanning as a young CIA agent that feels tacked on.  On a personal note, I find myself growing weary of CGI violence and stories about one-man killing machines.  (When I was younger, I could easily celebrate a hundred henchmen getting taken out by our hero.  Now, I found myself saying, “He probably had a family.”)  The film ends on a note of redemption for McCall and I hope he takes it for all it’s worth.

Scenes That I Love: The Nowhere To Run Montage From The Warriors

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is Walter Hill’s birthday so what better day to share one of the greatest musical montages ever? In the Nowhere To Run montage from The Warriors, a radio DJ lets every gang in New York City know that they are all now hunting for the same group of people.  What I love about this montage is how the gangs grow increasingly flamboyant as the montage continues.  We go from seeing relatively normal-looking gang members to a bunch of people dressed up like a phantom baseball players.  It’s quite a progression!

From Walter Hill’s 1979 film, The Warriors, here is a scene that I love!

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Walter Hill Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we here at the Shattered Lens wish a happy 82nd birthday to the great director Walter Hill.

Walter Hill is one of those legendary figures who has a devoted cult of fans but it still seems like he’s never quite gotten all of the opportunities and the acclaim that he deserved.  Perhaps because so many of his films are considered to be genre pieces, they were often not appreciated until a few years after they were first released.  But for film lovers and film students, Walter Hill is one of the most important directors of the past 50 years.

Today, we celebrate with….

4 Shots From 4 Walter Hill Films

The Driver (1978, dir by Walter Hill, DP: Philip H. Lathrop)

The Warriors (1979, dir by Walter Hill, DP: Andrew Laszlo)

Streets of Fire (1984, dir by Walter Hill, DP: Andrew Laszlo)

Last Man Standing (1996, dir by Walter Hill, DP: Lloyd Ahern II)

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 3.25 “Celebration/Captain Papa/Honeymoon Pressure”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, an important question is finally answered!

Episode 3.25 “Celebration/Captain Papa/Honeymoon Pressure”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on March 29th, 1980)

Ever since Vicki first came aboard the ship, I have been wondering how exactly a 12 year-old can live (and apparently work) on an ocean liner.  One of my main questions has concerned how she is getting an education while sailing back and forth to Mexico.

With this episode, I finally got my answer.  When social worker Susan Stoddard (Lois Nettleton) boards the ship to decide whether or not to recommend that the Captain be given custody of Vicki, one of the first question that she asks is about school.

“Chief Petty Officer Dooley has a master’s in education,” Stubing replies, before saying that this never-before-mentioned character served as Vicki’s tutor.

Well, I’m glad that’s been cleared up.  Still, it is interesting that we’ve never before seen or even heard of this Dooley character.  We don’t even see Dooley in this episode.  You would think the social worker would want to talk to the person who is in charge of Vicki’s education.  Instead, Susan sees the rest of the crew, all of whom try to be on their best behavior in order to convince her that the Love Boat is not the floating HR nightmare that we all know it is.

(Still, at least the crew tried.  I’m surprised Doctor Bricker didn’t just try to sleep with her or something….)

This would be a really depressing episode of the Captain wasn’t awarded custody.  Luckily, Susan is so impressed by the crew that she says she will definitely file a positive report.  As she put it, Vicki not only has one wonderful parent.  She has “Five wonderful parents!”  Let’s see — Stubing, Julie, Gopher, Isaac, Doc …. yep, that’s five.  I’m sure Chief Petty Officer Dooley appreciates being left out of the group.

Isaac has more to worry about than just Captain Stubing’s situation.  Isaac is convinced that an old man named Gordon (Noah Beery, Jr.) is bank robber!  Gordon, who works as a bank guard at the port, is sailing on the Love Boat with his wife of 30 years, Betty (Alice Faye).  Gordon is spending a lot of money.  Isaac worries that Gordon stole the money but actually, it turns out that Gordon is just spending his life savings because his wife is in poor health and he wants to make sure that she has a wonderful vacation.  Unfortunately, Gordon spends too much on a diamond ring.  His wife, realizing what Gordon has done, secretly exchanges the ring for a cheaper one and tells her husband that she doesn’t need a life of luxury.  She just needs him.  Awwwwwww!  What a sweet old couple.

Finally, there are two real criminals on the boat.  Ralph (Norman Alden) and Ben (Richard Bakalyan) are two mob enforces who have been sent to accompany the boss’s daughter (Eve Plumb) on her honeymoon with her un-connected husband, Mark (Sal Viscuso).  Ralph and Ben’s presence makes Mark so uncomfortable that he can’t even consummate his marriage.  Ralph and Ben try to make things romantic for the couple.  Eventually, Doc Bricker tells the gangsters that Mark has a fictional disease, which causes Ralph and Ben to back off.  The married couple finally gets to celebrate their honeymoon.  But Mark still married into a mafia family so he’ll probably be machine-gunned as soon as he steps off the boat.

With the exception of the stupid Mafia story, this was a sweet episode.  I’m glad things worked out for the old couple and for Vicki and the Captain.  The Love Boat is not really a show that you watch for the acting but Gavin MacLeod’s natural sincerity always served him well whenever the show focused on his role as Vicki’s father.  Plus, I no longer have to worry about whether or not Vicki is going to have more than a sixth grade education.  So that’s a good thing.

Here Are The DGA Nominations

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Directors Guild of America announced its nominations today.  The DGA is an even bigger precursor than the SAG and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Oscar line-up mirror this DGA’s line-up.

Here are the nominees!

NARRATIVE FEATURE FILM
Greta Gerwig – Barbie
Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer
Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things
Alexander Payne – The Holdovers
Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon

FIRST TIME NARRATIVE FEATURE FILM

Cord Jefferson – American Fiction
Manuela Martelli – Chile ’76
Noora Niasari – Shayda
A.V. Rockwell – A Thousand And One
Celine Song – Past Lives

Here Are The 2023 SAG Nominations!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The nominations for the 2023 SAG Awards were announced earlier today and there were a few interesting results to be found.  The SAG Awards tend to be a pretty strong sign of what’s in the Oscar conversation, if just because the Actor’s Branch is the biggest voting bloc in the Academy so being snubbed (or unexpectedly mentioned) here can actually mean something.

Is that bad news for Charles Melton?  Melton has been dominating the critics awards for his performance in May/December but he was not nominated for a SAG Award.  In fact, no one from May/December was nominated, indicating that the film may not be the Oscar favorite that some assumed.

The Color Purple has not really figured that much into the critics awards but SAG obviously liked it.  For some reason, I was expecting The Holdovers to get an ensemble nomination.  It didn’t but Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph still received individual nominations.

(In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was so convinced The Holdovers — which does not have the type of huge cast that is usually honored with the ensemble award — would get an ensemble nomination but oh well.  It happens!)

Willem DaFoe — and not Mark Ruffalo — was nominated for Poor Things.

It’s rare that any precursor ever lines up 100% with the actual Oscar nominations.  But SAG is one of the strongest precursors around so today (especially with the DGA film nominations coming out later) is good day to adjust your predictions.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A CAST IN A MOTION PICTURE
American Fiction
Barbie
The Color Purple
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Annette Bening – Nyad
Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon
Carey Mulligan – Maestro
Margot Robbie – Barbie
Emma Stone – Poor Things

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Bradley Cooper – Maestro
Colman Domingo – Rustin
Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Emily Blunt – Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple
Penelope Cruz – Ferrari
Jodie Foster – Nyad
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Sterling K. Brown – American Fiction
Willem Dafoe – Poor Things
Robert De Niro – Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling – Barbie

OUTSTANDING ACTION PERFORMANCE BY A STUNT ENSEMBLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Barbie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
John Wick: Chapter 4
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES
Matt Bomer – Fellow Travelers
Jon Hamm – Fargo
David Oyelowo – Lawmen: Bass Reeves
Tony Shalhoub – Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie
Steven Yeun – Beef

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A TELEVISION MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES
Uzo Aduba – Painkiller
Kathryn Hahn – Tiny Beautiful Things
Brie Larson – Lessons in Chemistry
Bell Powley – A Small Light
Ali Wong – Beef

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE IN A COMEDY SERIES
Abbott Elementary
Barry
The Bear
Only Murders in the Building
Ted Lasso

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Brett Goldstein – Ted Lasso
Bill Hader – Barry
Ebon Moss-Bachrach – The Bear
Jason Sudeikis – Ted Lasso
Jeremy Allen White – The Bear

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Alex Borstein – The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Rachel Brosnahan – The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Quinta Brunson – Abbott Elementary
Ayo Edebiri – The Bear
Hannah Waddingham – Ted Lasso

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE IN A DRAMA SERIES
The Crown
The Gilded Age
The Last of Us
The Morning Show
Succession

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Brian Cox – Succession
Billy Crudup – The Morning Show
Kieran Culkin – Succession
Matthew Macfadyen – Succession
Pedro Pascal – The Last of Us

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Jennifer Aniston – The Morning Show
Elizabeth Debicki – The Crown
Bella Ramsey – The Last of Us
Keri Russell – The Diplomat
Sarah Snook – Succession

OUTSTANDING ACTION PERFORMANCE BY A STUNT ENSEMBLE IN A DRAMA OR COMEDY SERIES
Ahsoka
Barry
Beef
The Last of Us
The Mandalorian

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Baywatch Nights 1.9 “Blues Boys”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, an detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

This week, Mitch considers the blues!

Episode 1.9 “Blues Boy”

(Dir by Reza Badiyi, originally aired on November 25th, 1995)

Lyle Logan (Michael Preston) is a 13 year-old musical prodigy who plays a guitar on the Malibu Pier with his guardian, Ned Simon (Greg Wrangler).  Seven years earlier, Lyle witnessed the murder of his father by his Uncle Willie (Nathan Cavaleri).  Now, Uncle Willie has just been released from prison and he’s searching for Lyle because he believes that Lyle knows where his father stashed the money from a robbery.

Uncle Willie has his men abduct Ned, planning on using him for leverage to get to his nephew.  Lyle approaches Mitch and hires the detective agency to track Ned down.  However, Mitch, Ryan and Garner are more interested in learning the truth about Lyle’s background.  Though Lyle at first refuses to open up and even tries to run away when Mitch asks him about his background, Lyle eventually comes to trust the group.  Together, they save Lyle from Uncle Willie.  As for the stash of money, it’s in a first aid kit that breaks apart when it’s tossed into the ocean.  The money watches up on the beach, where everyone goes crazy trying to grab some for themselves.

This was a pretty simple episode.  In fact, it was a struggle to come up with 200 words to say about the plot.  There’s not a lot going on, beyond Lyle running up and down the pier and Uncle Willie-looking evil.  The only thing that kept this from being an episode of Baywatch was the presence of Angie Harmon and the lack of red bathing suits.  In many ways, this episode highlights one of the biggest problems for Baywatch Nights.  Far too often, the show just feels like a detective-themed episode of Baywatch (a show that actually did feature several detective-themed episodes both before and after the Baywatch Nights experiment).  This episode, for instance, barely features any scenes that take place at night.  Mitch does most of his investigating during the day, which is when he really should be working as a lifeguard.

The episode’s inability to escape the shadow of its parent show is exemplified by a scene that occurs about halfway through the episode.  We get an extended sequence in which Ryan, Garner, and Mitch listen to Lyle play his guitar and they all have flashbacks to their past.  Ryan’s memories deal with being the daughter of a navy officer.  Garner remembers tossing a football back and forth with his father.  And Mitch …. well, Mitch just has Baywatch flashbacks.  It’s one of those silly, overly earnest scenes that one expects to find any production starring David Hasselhoff.  (And the montage is, of course, scored by the Hoff singing a song.)  Still, it’s hard not to notice that, while Ryan and Garner both have a past, Mitch just has another television show.

The episode ends with Lyle meeting and playing with B.B. King.  Hopefully, B.B. adopted the kid.  Seriously, he had been through a lot.

Film Review: Aftermath (dir by Jozsef Gallai and Gergö Elekes)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A woman named Kate (Fruzsina Nagy) drives down a road.  We don’t know where she is driving to but we can tell that she’s driving quickly and she’s not in the mood for any delays.  It’s the way that someone drives when they’re trying to escape but they’re not sure where they want to go.  It’s way you drive when you just want to convince yourself that you can somehow leave everything behind.

We hear what sounds like an accident and suddenly, Kate is waking up in a forest.  Her car is nowhere to be seen and Kate has no idea how she came to be in the forest.  In fact, she’s not even sure who she was before she woke up.  She has no memories of her past life, beyond fleeting visions that don’t always seem to fit together.  Eventually, she meets another apparent amnesiac, Bubba (Edward Apeagyei).  Bubba wears a locket around his neck and there’s a picture of a woman in the locket but he doesn’t seem to be quite sure who she was.

Bubba and Kate are not alone in the forest.  There are other wanderers and then there’s a group of men who appear to be soldiers, wearing crude uniforms and gas masks and carrying machine guns.  (The sight of the soldiers, with their crude uniforms, bring to mind the horrific militias that often spring up in the aftermath of a war and attempt to seize power out of the chaos.)  Receiving cryptic orders from their leader (Eric Roberts), the soldiers patrol the forest and execute anyone that they come across.  Their leader repeatedly tells them that they have to track down and execute everyone because the future of the world depends upon it.  Failure is not an option.

Aftermath deals with a very real fear.  The idea of suddenly waking up and discovering that you have not only lost your identity but also control over your own fate is at the heart of many horror stories and it’s also a reflection of the way many people feel about living in today’s world.  One wrong word, thought, or move and you can find yourself exiled into both a real and metaphorical wilderness.  When Kate wakes up with little memory of what the world was like before she ended up in that forest, she’s feeling what a lot of people have felt when they try to remember the world and their lives before the lockdowns of 2020 and all of the political and societal events that followed.  We live in a world that seems to change from day to day and, as result, everyone has had that moment when, like Kate, they’ve struggled to understand what’s happening.  From the minute that Kate wakes up with the feeling that she has no control over what’s happening to her, she becomes an instantly relatable character.  The audience not only wants to know what’s happening to her but they also want her to regain control of her fate.  If Kate can regain control, then those watching in the audience can also regain control.

The film’s cinematography emphasizes both the grandeur and the ominous atmosphere of the forest, making it a place that manages to be beautiful and threatening at the same time and the deliberate pace builds up suspense as Kate tries to discover why she is in the forest.  Fruzsina Nagy and Edward Apeagyei both give sympathetic and relatable performances as Kate and Bubba and the audience does care what happens to them.  Aftermath is both an intriguing thriller and a meditation on life and love.

Aftermath will be released on digital and blu-ray by Bayview Entertainment on January 30th.