Terrible Movie Marathon #15

After Last Season

(Mark Region, 2009)

Without a doubt, this is the most perplexing and inept thing I've ever seen...and that's saying something. Not to be confused with Hallmark's After the Fall (or That Championship Season), Mark Region's one and only feature (so far) is, perhaps, a movie. You will have to see it to decide. The DVD has been priced in the $150.00+ range in rare times, although occasionally it gets uploaded to youtube in full. Here's an excerpt from what I originally wrote about it in 2012:

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 auteur possessing some rare combination of Brechtian obsession and autistic brilliance may be putting us on.  

The overall affect of After Last Season is 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 suggests 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 is only for those with a certain degree of synaptic fortitude. Structurally, though the film posts many signs, the path is remarkably unclear. The film is littered with shots of signs, arrows, and various cheaply printed copy, made even more frustrating by being cross-cut with mid-conversation discussions about locations and points of destination that are entirely irrelevant.  In many cases, scenes include shots of paper that have nothing on them pinned to walls and doors, as in one particularly baffling, recurring cutaway shot of a symmetrical row of blank sheets 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 more perplexed than any reaction an audience could muster.

Jen's Award for Best Dialogue

(A character to another character)

"I've never been TO that town, but I've been through it."

Up Next: Is this a Bruce Campbell movie?! 

Sadly, no.