TERRIBLE? or JUST TERRIBLE?: "After Last Season" dir. Mark Region, 2009

For those who have already sought out (or stumbled haplessly into) Mark Region's After Last Season (2009) and recognized it as a cinematic offering worthy of inclusion among the pantheon of the unquestionably inept and utterly compelling cinema of Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2),Tommy Wiseau (The Room), and James Nguyen (Birdemic: Shock and Terror), the answer to my ongoing query at ECSTATIC is clear:  it's truly Terrible.  For those who have yet to see After Last Season and either aren't given to the pleasure of movies so bad they're irresistible, or are without interest in the academic confluences of Primtive Art and Avant-Grade cinema, then the case may be a bit more difficult to make. I will not make an attempt to try and unpack this "thriller" through Aristotelian notions of Plot, Character, Diction, and so on; to do so would no doubt compromise the integrity of Region's work. And, as Donald Fagen once said of Steely Dan's earliest attempts at making music:  "Even shit has a certain kind of integrity...and we didn't have that."

Donald Fagen

As for this debut film by Region--a pseudonym that reportedly belongs to a film maker of Asian descent (and is not an invented moniker of accomplished film maker and "Jackass" collaborator Spike Jonze, as rumored here)--how it all holds together is a mystery.  It is extremely compelling, while simultaneously being an assault on all basic cognitive processes.  After Last Season is only for those with a certain degree of synaptic fortitude.  Structurally, though the film posts many signs, the path is remarkably unclear. In fact, the film is literally littered with shots of signs, arrows, and various cheaply printed copy.  In many cases, scenes include shots of paper that have nothing on them pinned to walls and doors, as in one particularly baffling (and recurring) cutaway shot of a symmetrical row of blank pieces of paper taped to the outside of a house.  When we finally return from any one of these various enigmatic cutaways to check back in on the characters, their reactions are invariably and defiantly more perplexed than any potential reaction an audience could muster.

After Last Season - "Craig?"

In terms of exposition and dialogue, to say that After Last Season has a tendency toward narrative meandering is like saying The Tree of Life jumps around in time a bit.  After Last Season is a grand dare of comprehension that works so aggressively on ones taken-for-granted ability to piece together narrative that it can't help but beg the question of whether or not it is a "hoax" of some sort.  The repeated cutaways to arrows pointing in different directions and signs guiding us cryptically to "Rooms A-B" or "Rooms C-D" may lead one to conclude that an individual possessing some rare combination of Brechtian obsession and autistic brilliance may be putting us on. Read as a revision of a certain type of commercial sci-fi thriller--one involving elements like psychology students, large corporations, thought transference, and a rash of local stabbings by an invisible, knife-wielding killer--conceived by someone who has a distinctly altered or damaged neurological make-up, After Last Season hints at having been a deliberate, and perhaps even competent, attempt at joining the ranks of success occupied by the likes of Wiseau.

Tommy Wiseau       

But, the narrative hiccups that characterize The Room make up nearly the entire modus operandi of After Last Season.  Also, the overall affect of After Last Season is certainly more maddening, with its disjointed discussions of nearby towns and markets, its mind numbing use of computer graphics that make the Dire Strait's "Money for Nothing" video from 1986 seem groundbreaking, and set design that would suggest the entire production was shot entirely at actual sites of serial killings. The soundtrack is plagued by a recurring background noise that is a combination between digitally suppressed traffic noises and supernatural intestinal feedback.  One of the most difficult aspects of the production to wrap your brain around is the inclusion of an MRI machine that appears in the first scene, is supposedly integral to the plot, and is clearly constructed out of taped together pieces of paper.

After Last Season - the MRI scene

Although the film has only made small ripples in the bad movie blog world since it's release in 2009, and it seems as if the buzz generated by the initial trailer has died down a bit, it is not clear whether or not it will emerge in the same way that Wiseau has, spurring repeat interactive midnight screenings across the country. For one thing, After Last Season isn't appealing as a "Terrible" movie in quite the same way as The Room, or even Troll 2, and one of the reasons is that those movies both present a higher level of competence in relation to their respective genres. If you can believe that.

For more information on obtaining a copy, visit the website.
And, for more information on the bizarre life of this film, 
visit the Facebook page of star Jason Kulas.