After the Dark

While the story's conceit brims with metaphor and symbolism, it rarely comes off as didactic or heavy-handed. Instead, it's smart and provocative. The movie's late-breaking twist also feels about right.

After the Dark is a shaggy dog story but an intriguing and frequently beautiful one.

Through all the ham-fisted lunacy, writer-director John Huddles displays an infectious love of philosophy, coupled with an exhilarating, anything-goes filmmaking style.

Slack acting (perhaps aggravated by the harsh lighting design) and the script’s inability to build characters together vaporize the chances for the movie, which is both smugly clever and at times distastefully clueless.

Although it displays far more imagination than is usual for such teen-oriented fare, After the Dark ultimately sinks under the weight of its pretensions.

We'd be able to give this movie a pass if it actually took its own original concept seriously, which is the biggest problem that After The Dark perpetuates.

Credit for being offbeat can only do so much to redeem a neither-fish-nor-fowl bore like After the Dark, whose exploitable elements go tastefully unexploited while its gestures toward profundity turn out to be playing air guitar.

There are a lot of interesting ideas here, and the situations that the characters come up against are (within reasonable doubt) believable. There's a strong sense of superficiality and overachieving, though, that detracts from making this a wonderful film; there simply isn't enough substance to stay with you beyond the credits roll.

Without going into full details and spoiling the movie, I'll just explain how this movie felt like. The feeling is like " Going into Mc Donald and ordering a Big Mac because it looks great on the billboard. When you start chewing on it, it taste great but after 10 minutes later, it somehow upsets your stomach". To summarize it: Good opening, interesting story but weird ending.

I have to admit that it is a clever idea for a movie but the problem was that it made me feel like I was in a college lecture and I hate when movies go in that direction.

There is no other words to describe this movie : What the Fu** ?? The trailer seemed so great : a philosophic reflection conjugated to an apocalypse ; and James d'Arcy, an actor I find very interesting... Well, it seemed to be a film for me. NOT AT ALL !!! And the worst in this : there was a real potential. The special effects are good, the cast is approximately correct (even if some lines are really bad acted), and the story IS really good. It's just a movie with great possibilities which made all the bad choices and it gives us something very disgusting. There are so many questions raised that, from the beginning, we look forward to the end. Average spectator, don't make this fatal error: you must expect anything of this movie! This movie will bring you no answer, will make that to raise of new questions which lead to nothing and will have one of the most hopeless ending I ever seen! This end is so much disappointing that it is not even necessary to check the box "spoilers": we understand nothing, the characters are flat, not only once we understand their motivations and the editing would have been able to be interesting if the editor had the slightest information concerning the movie! In short, this movie gives the impression of having been realized by several teams, which communicated between them at no time. Then, we assembled the various pieces, we stuck a rough music above and here is After-party the Dark!! PS: I am French, please, indulgence for the mistakes!

A movie with a great, great premise, with only little defect: the poor execution, target demographic, script, and direction. Everything crumbles shortly after the beginning, from the lighting, to the plot, to the characters. And the ending. OH THE ENDING. It's completely out of place, clearly, a marketing afterthought. If you're an adult, save yourself the time, and maybe watch The wave.