Aftermath and Genesis

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Aftermath & Genesis

June 3rd 2008 01:54

Spanish filmmaker Nacho Cerdà certainly has a vivid imagination. It’s a very dark and very twisted one, but he also has an eye and ear for serenity and beauty. He’s a director of extreme textures and high contrasts, and Aftermath (1994) and Genesis (1998) are two half-hour shorts which capture the powerful cinematic elements of his darkness and light.

Since its release Aftermath has garnered a reputation as a thoroughly disturbing and gut-churning exercise in extreme horror. It’s considered an underground cult classic; atrocity masquerading as high art. It’s a film which exposes a truly depraved side of human nature: necrophilia. But not just a dead body; this is the corpse of a body which has been defiled through autopsy and then violated further.

Pep Tosar as the mortician

Aftermath is extreme material presented from a highly objective perspective. There is no dialogue, only music, however the music – Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor – offsets the proceedings to such a degree, the viewer can’t help but feel utterly displaced.

Two morticians are working on respective autopsies. A morgue assistant stops momentarily to watch them at work, but he is given the evil eye by one and so quickly moves on. One mortician finishes and leaves. The other brings in the next body, that of a young woman who has just died in an accident. He is transfixed by her prone state and realising an opportunity, locks the door.

What follows is an act of outrageous and appalling extremes. The mortician proceeds through the stages of the autopsy; removing the clothes, cutting open the head and removing the brain, cutting open the torso (in horrendously evil way), and then, after taking photos with his camera, he sets it up on the adjacent bench on timer, drops his trousers … and mounts the splayed corpse.

If you thought you’d seen it all manner of (fictional) atrociities. You haven’t see Aftermath. It may deal with death, but it’s an eye-opener alright. A ghastly portrait of what possibly happens when our dead bodies are left to the mercy of the coroner’s knife, and what indignities (to put it mildly) we might possibly suffer. It’s an extreme example of depravity, and an impressive concept for a horror movie.

The special effects make-up (full body prosthetics) by an outfit called DDT wasn’t as convincing as I thought it might be, having heard about this film for several years. You can’t disguise a rubber corpse when you move it or push hard objects in or against it. But the blood and guts were very realistic, and the mortician (played with alarming presence by Pep Tosar), whose face is partially obscured by the surgical mask, was downright creepy.

The film’s coda has the mortician back at his home feeding the dead woman’s heart, which he’d stolen and then blended up, to his dog. The newspaper under the dog’s dish has the obiturary for the dead woman … she’d died on Christmas Day. How grim indeed.

Four years later Nacho Cerdà made Genesis (1998), the third part to his trilogy of death (the first part was a 7-minute black and white student short called The Awakening he made in 1990). Genesis is a very emotive and evocative look at the limbo between life and death. Whereas Aftermath was shot in a highly realistic style and dealt matter-of-factly with a plausible situation, Genesis is the opposite, a supernatural, expressionistic tale of an artist’s deep sorrow over the death of his young wife.

Pep Tosar as the sculptor

Like Aftermath (and The Awakening), Genesis has no dialogue, only music. Again it is classical, and it is stirring and beautiful. The imagery is less stark than Aftermath, and no where near as horrific, but it is still powerful and visceral.

A sculptor (Pep Tosar, again) has lost his wife (Trae Houlihan) in a car accident. In a flashback montage at the beginning the husband and wife are having fun at a garden party being shot as a home movie. Now the traumatised artist has made a sculpture in his wife’s image. He caresses her form lovingly, longingly, achingly.

Trae Houlihan's form as the sculpture

Then something very strange and otherworldly begins to happen. The plaster from the scultpre begins to crack and peel, and blood begins to trickle down her alabaster body. The man is both horrified, yet mesmerised. The next day, after the man awakens from a nightmare, he discovers a little more has cracked away. Just as importantly, he has a nosebleed, and notices dust falling from his face.

As the sculpture of his wife begins to crack and peel away more and more, the artist begins to mutate into stone. Slowly and surely the two human forms inverse … She is re-born, as he passes into the beyond.

Or perhaps it has been entirely in his mind, and he has simply gone insane.

Genesis is a brilliant piece of work, an existential horror movie, a nightmare of beauty.

NB: Nacho Cerdà went on to make the impressive ghost feature The Abandoned (2006), and is currently in production on a documentary feature on the history of 70’s Spanish horror movies.

Here are the last nine minutes of Genesis:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

7 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Cibbuano

June 3rd 2008 02:44

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Genesis sounds fantastic... I've only heard of Aftermath, second hand, and it sounded so grotesque that I'm not sure I could sit through it.

Comment by Bryn

June 3rd 2008 04:53

Horrorphile

Cibby, Aftermath is worth a peek, but Genesis is the standout of the two. Very different films however. Some people I'm sure would find Genesis a load of bollocks, whilst relishing the uber-grotesquerie of Aftermath.

Comment by Damo

June 3rd 2008 05:59

Genesis sounds terrific.

I am not so sure that necro is my cup of tea. There may be clubs where it goes on but I just wonder if I am not that experimental. Shivver.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Comment by Bryn

June 3rd 2008 07:11

Horrorphile

Damo, feel safe that I, Orble resident horrorphile, share your view on the basic repulsion in wanting to fuck the dead. If you'll pardon my French.
As for Genesis, it is terrific. Wish I'd thought of the idea first.

Comment by JohnDoe

June 3rd 2008 08:15

Film & TV on DVD

Aftermath still sneeks into my brain from time to time, certainly one of the most challenging 30 minutes i have ever experienced. Satisfying but repulsive.

I haven't seen Genesis but I have been trying to find a copy for years....now you have it I may finally get to see it.