The Twilight Zone had several classic stories featuring
characters that were left to ponder how the world around them had suddenly gone
topsy turvy. For example, “Five
Characters in Search of an Exit,” featured five such “people,” who were trapped
in a large, round metal prison — how did they get there, how can they
escape?
Earl Holliman found himself
alone, in a deserted town, in “Where is Everybody?” The feeling of being hopelessly alone drove
him mad.
Director Ryan Smith’s mysterious horror tale, After,
covers similar ground as these stories and for genre fans — especially those
who love The Twilight Zone — it is like meeting an old friend; a kindred
spirit.
Word arrived this past week that Mongrel Media, with sales
and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, will be
releasing After on DVD this coming Jan. 17.
As the film opens we are introduced to Ana (Karolina Wydra),
a nurse, and Freddy (Steven Strait), a would-be graphic novelist, who are
fellow passengers on a bus. They are
strangers, just riders heading home, who have a brief conversation and then
WHAM … the bus is involved in an accident.
Ana awakes to find herself in her own bed. Was it a dream? It seemed so real, but all she knows right
now is that she is late for work. So
off to the hospital she goes to work her shift. It’s empty.
In fact, the entire town is empty.
Terrified, she follows a source of music to a house and
there is Freddy. Just the two of them,
alone, all alone in their little town … it certainly seems that they are either
sharing the same nightmare or they are dead.
That’s filmmaker Ryan Smith’s set-up for After
and it is a nifty one. Ana and Freddy
have to work through this nightmare, face an eerie fog — that is slowly closing
in on the town — solve the mystery of a door with thousands of keys and
confront a monster that is stalking them!
A chilling mystery that will take you to “another dimension,” one that
is definitely in that “middle ground of light and shadow.”
