Critic Reviews

Aftermath is a bombshell disguised as a thriller.

With its slow-burn pacing and horrifying reveals, Aftermath remains a deeply compelling puzzle.

What gives Aftermath its peculiar strain of portent is Pasikowski's consistent suggestion of the futility of bold, desperate attempts to undo a wrong.

Aftermath's avoidance of Holocaust-film tropes lets the picture address weighty historical and moral issues while fitting into the genre shoes of a small-town thriller.

Although Pasikowski is heavy-handed in his filmmaking, sometimes in the extreme, Aftermath does show the danger inherent in this kind of groupthink.

The film isn't so much about the moral atrophy of people who refuse to come to terms with their past as it is about cosmic karma passed from fathers to sons like an ancient curse.

What keeps the film so fascinating is how even its protagonists are greatly flawed. While certainly upsetting, Aftermath takes a look at the dangers inherent in an abundance of truth.

An uneven but consistently compelling film that, with its roots in the horrors of World War II, generated no small amount of controversy in its native Poland when it was released there in 2012.

Director Wladyslaw Pasikowski has made the mistake of going about his business as if he were fashioning a horror film.

Pasikowski isn’t interested in actual characters or narrative nuance; rather, the prime concern here is censuring Polish anti-Semitism, which, no matter how righteous an aim, eventually comes at the expense of engaging storytelling.