After the Lethargy is a sometimes misguided but ultimately disturbing horror/sci-fi tale with a real sting.
Synopsis: Sara travels to the hot spot in which supposedly one of the most extraordinary contact episodes with extraterrestrials in history took place. The forest ranger and a sinister villager, accompany her, helping her to overcome the dangers that nature entails. However, despite good intentions, they will soon be attacked by a creature that lives in the depths of the forest, being forced to take refuge in an old abandoned military barracks.
After the Lethargy struggles with something that a lot of lower budget films struggle with and that is featuring ideas that cannot easily be brought to the screen. It makes a crucial mistake in showing too much in some instances where the suggestion would be much more effective.
Similarly some of the supporting cast are quite poor with some unfortunate, panto-level acting. However, Andrea Guasch does some great work as Sara who really anchors the film. Joe Manjon also delivers an interesting performance. As we spend most of our time with them this really helps.
I have to say that during the film I wasn’t finding a great deal of interest and although I want to avoid giving spoilers, there are lots of things that definitely make sense in hindsight. The material heads in an incredibly dark direction and I wish that the direction had more restraint as this would be so much better if some elements were withheld.
While the pacing is undoubtedly off, the film features a number of segments of an alien hunting interest show. This is a great device as it allows for a fair amount of exposition dumping without having the characters explain too much themselves.
Getting to the interesting and disturbing parts does take some time (and endurance of some ropey acting) and for that reason some may run out of patience before it hits it’s stride, but those who stick around should find something in it’s grisly left-turn.
Better pacing and a little realisation that some special effects were not that special means that After The Lethargy remains OK rather than excellent, but the central idea is a very good and rather horrific one.
scaredsheepless 