AFTER

Ana (Karolina Wydra) is a nurse, travelling home late one night by bus. Fellow passenger Freddy (Steven Strait) starts talking to her and they soon learn they have things in common, such as where they're from. Before you know it he's showing her his sketches (he's "a projectionist by day, artist by night").

Despite her polite attempt to cut their conversation short, Freddy has the front to ask her out for coffee sometime. Ana half-heartedly agrees. But then ... the bus crashes.

When she next awakes, Ana finds herself in a completely abandoned hospital. Wandering out into the evening air, the streets are equally empty. Following the sound of loud music coming from a nearby house, she enters to find it's Freddy's home.

Together they search their town for signs of life and try desperately to contact the outside world. No luck.

They grab a car and start to make their way out of their hometown of Pearl, but a huge electrical storm in the sky ahead of them gives them serious doubts. Forging ahead they then run into a thick black smoke-cloud that appears to blocking all exits to Pearl. Suddenly, a diner appears and the sun comes out.

Inside the diner, people sit eating and drinking. But none of them appear to be able to see or hear Ana and Freddy. They soon deduce that they're in another dimension, witnessing the past - Ana even recognises herself as a young girl sitting in the diner with her late aunt. Just as suddenly, the diner disappears and the dark cloud returns. Ana and Freddy are still looking for way out of Pearl.

The weirdness continues, with our intrepid pair walking into more flashbacks (Freddy as a boy fielding questions from his father about his being bullied at school), experiencing alternate reality moments and even being chased by a mysterious fanged monster. In amongst all this excitement, the pair hear voices discussing Ana's death - in three days' time. From this, they surmise that Ana is in a coma following the bus crash and has three days to decipher what all of this oddness means ... or die.

But there's more. It turns out that both Freddy's old sketches and, in particular, the journal Ana used to keep and write stories in as a child, will carry great significance in helping them unravel this conundrum.

What is it from the past that links Freddy to Ana? What is the tragedy that needs redressing to make amends? And what does that vicious toothy demon represent? All these questions will be answered for those with the stamina to sit through Ryan Smith's AFTER.

Handsomely shot, proficiently edited and ably scored, this film suffers because (a) there is no chemistry enjoyed between the two lifeless leads, and (b) the plot tries too hard to deliver on something it can't: originality. It's all over the place, cribbing ideas and moments from the likes of 28 DAYS LATER, SILENT HILL, THE MIST, JACOB'S LADDER, THE FALL, RESIDENT EVIL...

CGI creatures are seldom scary, and the monster in AFTER is no exception. Its design is definitely of the Del Toro variety: nothing to sniff at, but more fantastical than fearsome.

There's no suspense to be found here. Just a middling, low budget effort that knows how to use green screen technology effectively but precious little else.

Presented in 2.35:1, AFTER comes to UK DVD uncut and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Colours are decent if a tad muted; the same applies to blacks. Still, there is no noise to speak of and detail is always reliable. It's not a bad transfer at all.

English audio gets the benefit of both 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. The latter is the better of the two, offering a nicely bombastic mix whenever the ante ups.

The DVD opens to a static main menu page. From there, a static scene selection menu allows access to the film via 16 chapters.

Bonus features begin with a 79-second trailer for the film which trades on the louder action sequences and isn't shy about offering glimpses of the monster.

A 3-minute "Behind the Film" featurette is too short, but is at least snappily edited so as to allow for plenty of bite-sized comments from crew members about how many effects were employed on this low budget film, along with likening the premise to 'The Twilight Zone' and offering brisk footage of actors performing in front of green screens etc.

"VFX Comparison" does what it says on the tin. Over the course of a further 3 minutes we get split-screen examples of how the film's look was achieved through the magic of things like day-for-night and green screen superimpositions. For whatever reason, this has no audio.

Extras round off with 12 minutes of deleted scenes, 6 in total, which don't add anything essential to either plot or action. You get the option to watch each one in isolation or to select "Play All" and view them as a 12-minute whole.

Insipid and derivative, AFTER will at least appeal to undemanding sci-fi fans who are too young to have seen the numerous films it pilfers from. Everyone else may as well avoid.

By Stuart Willis