Dead Space: Aftermath Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Dead Space: Aftermath Blu-ray Movie Review

Miserable animation and a bad movie -- what is there to love?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 19, 2011

The mind is reality.

Unfortunately, the most obvious reality here is that Dead Space 2: Aftermath is a rushed, haphazardly-scripted, and poorly-animated endeavor that feels more like an afterthought made to cash in on the upcoming video game than it does a well-planned branching feature meant to better guide video gamers on the transition from the first Dead Space to the second. Hopefully the actual video game is better than this. There's no doubt that Aftermath exists only as a promotional tie-in -- that's fine -- but today's video gamers and movie watchers alike are going to demand something that's not quite as rushed, shoddily-animated, and, well, boring as this. At least EA's previous Dead Space DTV tie-in sported a halfway decent movie and good animation. This offers neither, and even a fairly robust soundtrack that seems to have been handled with some amount of TLC is not enough to give its target audience a reason to watch.

A better fate than watching this movie.

The USG O'Bannon is adrift. The troopers who board her derelict remains find a massacre -- scattered remains of what were once human beings -- and their sensors detect only four survivors. Those unfortunate enough to have survived the attack are forced to succumb to radically-advanced interrogation techniques as a secret and unscrupulous government agency attempts to learn what exactly happened on the planet known as Aegis VII that wrought such destructive havoc on the O'Bannon and her crew. As the truth of the massacre is revealed, the power of an ancient alien artifact comes to light, an artifact that's already destroyed several lives and is sure to wreak havoc throughout the universe, killing all those unfortunate enough to stumble upon it.

At a glimpse -- and particularly as the film opens -- Dead Space 2 shows glimmers of promise. Some of the early exterior space shots are borderline beautiful, and viewers can't help but to hope that there's some solid interstellar Horror goodness to come. Obviously, that's not the case. While Dead Space 2 plays around with some good ideas, one can't help but feel cheated out of a better experience. The script is sloppy and sluggish as the film barely passes for coherent in places and repeats itself in both story and structure in others. The middle act is comprised of viewing the same events from different perspectives as survivors of the O'Bannon recount their tales of terror -- or, beter said, recount their tales of what happened leading up to the terror. Indeed, the middle stretch is home to pretty much nothing other than blabber from all sides, and interest in the whole thing is sure to wane to somewhere between zero and zero through this stretch. The film's generally decent idea is negated by a slow pace and the fact the movie takes too long for anything of note to happen; it's basically characters chasing around shadows as their minds are infected by the mysterious alien artifacts, and while there's some action scattered around the first two-thirds of the film, it's primarily dialogue-heavy -- and poorly-scripted and lazily-acted dialogue at that.

By the time the Dead Space 2's meat-and-potatoes -- the human versus alien creatures/zombies/whatever it is they are carnage comes along -- the film's lost every single ounce of momentum it earned in the opening minutes. It doesn't help, either, that the characters are as dull and difficult to cheer for as any in memory. They're as boring as futuristic space jocks who find themselves dealing with a mysterious and dangerous alien artifact can be. And that's a hard to do, because that's a solid enough premise that's worked before -- or, at least, variants thereof -- in superior movies like Event Horizon. Still, the diull characters, bad pacing, and boring structure are not the film's worst problem. That honor goes to the atrocious animation that passes for decent in some scenes and looks like those animated and rough-around-the-edges pre-visualization sequences that are starting to replace traditional hand-drawn storyboards and are popping up with some regularity as special features on Blu-ray releases. Dead Space 2: Aftermath's animation is crude, not at all pleasing on the eye, and is the final straw in the movie that should have either been given more TLC or scrapped altogether, sad to say.

Dead Space: Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dead Space 2: Aftermath's 1080p transfer allows the film's shoddy animation to be seen in all its "glory" from beginning to end. Though some occasionally sharp graphics and solid colors are to be seen from time to time -- the film's star field open looks fairly slick -- the transfer slugs along and showcases one problem after another that repeat throughout the length of the film. As to the good first, black levels are decent and color reproduction is fair; bright shades of white and any of the more vibrant hues seen throughout the movie -- particularly blood red -- look good, though there are plenty of times when the image seems to favor a murky, dusty, industrial shade. Detail is decent but underwhelming, though often lost underneath the uneven shading, heavy ringing and jagged edges, obscene amounts of banding, awful color gradations, debilitating flatness, and an overal incomplete look that gives the movie more of a "rough draft" feel than a final, ready-for-primetime appearance. If many of these scenes were included as an extra to show what unfinished animation looked like, nobody would blink an eye, but as the final released product? Dead Space 2: Aftermath just looks sloppy and unfinished.

Dead Space: Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fortunately, there is a ray of sunshine peeking through the Dead Space 2: Aftermath clouds, and that's its above-average Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The picture's score enjoys solid clarity and fine spacing throughout. It's accompanied by a fair bit of bass, and the low end rumbles to the tune of several sound effects during the show as well, beginning with a heavy asteroid (or some sort of space-bound object) that slowly moves from one side of the stage to another with great heft in tow, and continuing on to several additional effects scattered throughout the movie. The track features a fair sense of space; the sensation of heavy metallic sounds reverberating through the fairly empty and metallic hollow shell of the O'Bannon is bound to impress, and voices and footsteps echo through her cavernous areas with ease. The surround speakers carry their fair share of the load, and dialogue reproduction is steady through the center channel, even if the voice acting isn't necessarily all that impressive. Overall, this is a fair track, but it's certainly nowhere near good enough to justify a watch.

Dead Space: Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Dead Space 2: Aftermath features only trailers for the Dead Space 2 video game (1080p, 1:53) and additional trailers for Dante's Inferno, Let Me In, and The Bleeding.

Dead Space: Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dead Space 2: Aftermath is a sluggishly-paced and poorly animated feature that has "rush job" written all over it. Frankly, there are no redeeming qualities here other than a fairly violent third act that's negated by a painfully dull first and second. The best part of the feature is a decent soundtrack and the blessing that is the short run time. This Blu-ray release of Dead Space 2: Aftermath sports an awful video presentation, though in Anchor Bay's defense, the problems seem to stem from the poor source and not the transfer itself. This release contains no supplements to speak of, either, but it does yield a solid soundtrack that's nevertheless in no way reason enough to buy. Better to spend these 70-some-odd minutes playing Dead Space 2 next week and the saved $20 on the game's collector's edition. As for this Blu-ray? Skip it.