Director: Mark Region
Screenplay: Mark Region
Cast: Jason Kulas as Matthew Andrews; Peggy
McClellan as Sarah Austin; Scott Winters as Dr. John Marlen; Casey McDougal as
Anne Plaven; Joan-Marie Dewsnap as Haley Marlen
[SPOILERS THROUGHOUT]
Synopsis: A pair of neurological
medical interns at the Prorolis Corporation, Matthew Andrews (Jason Kulas) and Sarah Austin (Peggy McClellan), experiment with
microchips which allow each other to see the other's dreams. A person has been
killing people around the area, which Matthew and Sarah inavertedly pick up on
during their experiment with the microchips.
I learnt of After Last Season in 2010. A long gone podcast called Spill.com brought the film up in their
Worst of 2009 episode. Amongst bad comedies, morally problematic rom-coms and
bad ideas in general, it was something above them in terms of its already
growing cult. Barely decorated environments, cardboard and paper on the walls,
minimal lighting and a cardboard MRI machine, evoking Lars von Trier's Dogville
(2003) by way of one of the films-within-a-film from Be Kind Rewind (2008). A film despite this that was apparently made
for $5 million nonetheless and filmed on 35mm celluloid stock. Those who
managed to see one of the four film prints that were struck and shown at
American cinemas were dumbfounded, formed their own Pineapple Club online
(inspired by one of the various scraps of paper found onscreen) and talked of
it. Some through it was a publicity stunt by Spike Jonze for Where the
Wild Things Are (2009). Then After
Last Season vanished. At least one print of the film was destroyed, and its
unknown what happened to the others as producer/distributor Index Square declined taking them back.
The DVD release is out of print. Director Mark
Region, confirmed as a real man who made the film as a sincere sci-fi
horror drama, was not impressed about people calling his film "so bad it's
good" and has not been seen or heard of since. And yet After Last Season is still talked of and
some have managed to see it.
"So bad it's good" is a
problematic term fed on cruelty. Ideally those films which failed but still
gained legacies are stories of perseverance and hard work. Even if failure is
funny, it's to laugh with or laugh at with sympathy with the creators. No one
thinks of Ed Wood Jr. by his death in
1978 penniless, alcoholic and homeless. They don't even think of him by Michael
Medved calling at Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) the worst
film ever made only. Fans sincerely love his work and just so happen to find
the wobbling tombstones funny. I sympathise with Mark Region in hindsight to how his film's reputation has been, but
as film writer Jason Coffman in his
extensive analysis of the film's history suggests1, may I suggest
that Region has still managed to make
something inspired even if by accident?
The synopsis once you brush past
what actually takes place onscreen is a b-movie plot. What happened to this
plot is more complicated and entirely to debate. The story of $5 million being
spent, if true, is likely from the use of film celluloid (which was just about
to become a niche as digital cameras took over when it was released), the
marketing, the four film prints, and whatever the cost of the infamous computer
effects. The product's sparseness is legendary in contrast to this speculated budget.
Card and paper covering bare walls, skeletal series of environments in a
warehouse which masquerade as medical and study rooms. One or two sets which a
person's home, significantly more decorated and colourful. Strangely it evokes the
same mood Andrew Bujalski intentionally
went for with Computer Chess (2013),
a film it spiritually is connected to in a perverse way and could work as a
double bill. The sets force the viewer to try to image the rooms they are meant
to be, an extreme minimalism that causes an alienation effect. Even ordinary
objects, like chairs or a metal ruler, become more significant on screen
because everything else is bare or made from cardboard. More so as the director
cuts in the midst of conversations to the little furniture there.
The plot is simplistic but in a
structure which purposely refutes this plot. The comparison to Computer Chess isn't absurd, Bujalski's film was a dramatic comedy
which consisted of scenes of characters talking about trivial or ordinary
things rather than about an elaborate plot, increasingly weird events that
buckle the reality and genre taking place as it goes along. After Last Season is this by accident. Dialogue
is mostly small talk but never meant to carry out characterisation if not plot.
It feels improvised, lengthy pregnant pauses and no sense that its real life accurately
depicted in the speech patterns. Real life in conversations is scattershot, can
lead to nowhere but also has various emotional peaks and drops. Here the
dialogue, spoken with a muted tone extreme even if for a Robert Bresson film, is light chat which conveys little information
even in dramatic moments. Region
wanted to bring realism to his film, but the glacial pace crawls under the
viewer's skin, the plot not starting properly until at least twenty or so
minutes into the film, creating something that forces the viewer to wait...and
wait for a prolonged amount of time. When the plot reaches its high points they're
muted and distorted. The reason behind the killer never truly explained, the
microchips revealed to be an elaborate dream sequence for Matthew. The final
scene is not of any lead character but the mother of a son who was killed and becomes
the invisible ghost who helps stop his killer, a scene post-grieving process of
a conversation between two older female friends in her house that leaves the
film not with dramatic tension but a slow dulled closure.
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It's anti-cinema even if as
mentioned it could be seen as an insulting name for the original
director-writer. I admit a tolerance for this type of cinema which has been
built from viewing the extremes of art cinema (the 7 1/2 hour Satantango (1994)) and bad cinema so I
am a rare case study. Most will find After
Last Season insufferable or just be confused. Depriving the viewer of
expectations of what a film should do however provides something more interesting
than if Region had just made another generic
film, its structure quirks aspects which have been done deliberately in other
movies for great effect. It's possible to enter a numb state viewing the film, even
a trance. No sense of plot found rejects the need to think about the material
in surface ways, the minimalism and dialogue leaves one to drift along. The
dialogue even has a strange mantra like obsession with disconnect. That characters
passed through people's home towns but never entered them fully. An anecdote
about a wild animal appearing only to just disappear again That they knew
places similar or were there at the same time, dialogue which undermines the
geography of where the film is meant to be repeatedly, undermines expectation
of events. That the microchip subplot is merely a prolonged dream sequence is
not a cop-out, the film so disconnected from plotting it becomes another depriving
of actual events of weight.
One could find the same
wavelength of the film and reach a calmness as a result, suggesting that the
best way to view the film (and not one that is just insulting to its creator)
is laying on beanbags in front of a giant screen and letting oneself in a group
viewing drift in and out of perceived consciousness. Not even falling asleep
occasionally but a state of wakefulness with yet becomes completely
disconnected from all but mere perception of the images onscreen. The film manages
to an atonal peak, the microchip subplot when the extensive computer animation
sequences take over. The computer effects used for the thoughts and images the lead
characters have in each others' minds is primitive, but of the same dreamlike
strangeness of obsolete animation vaporwave art and music latched onto. This
material can be seen in nostalgia but is more interesting when, as this type of
older or rudimentary animation is no longer close to the peak of its
technological capability, it takes on a dreamlike quality as they exist in the
purely unreal. The sequences are serene in lack of event, able to remove thought
from a viewer's mind as you watch basic shapes floating, maybe a cameo from an
old 3D Max female figure or a rudimentary car but mainly basic shapes. The
computer effects are infamous amongst such infamous scenes throughout After Last Season but the irony is that
it's not that far removed from the kind of mood tapes that, when not using real
life nature footage, used shapes and colours for meditative effect to leave
their viewer in a sedate calm, helped as well by the fact that the dialogue
heard from the protagonists over these images have a tone comparable to a
mindfulness lesson, to rearrange shapes, to focus, to clarify what the other
sees etc. Viewing this agonisingly long sequence eventually managed to leave me
in a calm most self help books could likely failed to, perversely applaudable
knowing it wasn't deliberate.
After Last Season as a result has an aesthetic that Mark Region, if he ever (hopefully) returns to filmmaking, could intentionally use for a bold, disquieting tone. It fits his obsessions, of the esoteric and how human perception can be distorted. The first scene is of an older man, later revealed to be a prison guard, suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. There's a lengthy discussion on schizophrenia, including the most provocative and interesting line of dialogue, an anecdote of a woman medicated who claimed she heard voices from God, provocative as there is an actual ghost involved in the plot eventually. That ghost, whilst involving actors performing to an invisible knife in an empty room, is the one technically and thematically good aspect of After Last Season. A film this sedate and languid in tone, the sudden movement of a chair by itself is a shock and, likely using wires, it's far more effective than any high budget CGI could be. The ghost itself is interesting in how, after finding his murderer, he eventually dissipates from that existence, not even able to hold a metal ruler, into the great unknown. This fascination with this subject matter actually suits a tone as disarming as After Last Season's, and if it could be used on purpose something even better than this accidental marvel it could lead to great results. As it stands, the meeting if strange, not for all and disarming, but the meeting on a second occasion could be even more compelling than it is.
After Last Season as a result has an aesthetic that Mark Region, if he ever (hopefully) returns to filmmaking, could intentionally use for a bold, disquieting tone. It fits his obsessions, of the esoteric and how human perception can be distorted. The first scene is of an older man, later revealed to be a prison guard, suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. There's a lengthy discussion on schizophrenia, including the most provocative and interesting line of dialogue, an anecdote of a woman medicated who claimed she heard voices from God, provocative as there is an actual ghost involved in the plot eventually. That ghost, whilst involving actors performing to an invisible knife in an empty room, is the one technically and thematically good aspect of After Last Season. A film this sedate and languid in tone, the sudden movement of a chair by itself is a shock and, likely using wires, it's far more effective than any high budget CGI could be. The ghost itself is interesting in how, after finding his murderer, he eventually dissipates from that existence, not even able to hold a metal ruler, into the great unknown. This fascination with this subject matter actually suits a tone as disarming as After Last Season's, and if it could be used on purpose something even better than this accidental marvel it could lead to great results. As it stands, the meeting if strange, not for all and disarming, but the meeting on a second occasion could be even more compelling than it is.
Abstract Spectrum: Abstract/Dreamlike/Mindbender/Minimalism/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High
Personal Opinion:
It could also be insulting to the
director-writer to call After Last
Season an "anti-film". But that's not really an insult to a film
which is as clearly amiss in everything (in plot, tone, presentation), yet
manages to stand out as something unique become of this.
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