After Effect (2012) User Reviews

After Effect: Not entirely terrible

[Platypuschow · 4/10 · 7 January 2019]

After Effect otherwise known as The Removed, otherwise known as Patient Z: The Infected is a bit of an under the radar horror film and I can more than slightly see why.

It tells the story of a bunch of students in need of cash who join one of those dodgy medical testing thingies. Needless to say things don't go well for them in this feature zombie movie.

Wait, zombie!? Yes that's what it's advertised as but is it? This is more a 28 Days Later (2002) affair, I say this because zombie have rules and some people are quite stringent on that (Me included).

Truth be told going in I expected worse, I expected a hyper low budget zombie affair but it simply isn't. The movie looks great, on par with plenty of fairly high budget undead themed films I've seen lately so it certainly has that on its side. Character development? Also one for the win column, good job on that front.

Flip-side time, it just fails to come together. It lacks new ideas, though the setting is great what happens within it is generic, cliched and just not all that good. It's not bad, it's just that if you're a fan of the sub-genre you'll be seven steps ahead of the film itself.

Then there is the obligatory Baldwin brother, on this occasion Daniel. Have you noticed how some older/veteran/lazy actors have been having parts in films but don't liaise with any of the other cast at all? As if they never came onto the set a single time and was filmed separately? I've seen it a lot lately and that is what you have here again so certainly don't watch this for the Baldwin as he's not a big part of this movie.

If you're a big zombie fan you might find enjoyment (If you don't care about the zombie rules) but you'll have seen it all before.

The Good:

Looks decent

Great character development

The Bad:

Some of the films logistics are beyond dumb

Not zombies

Weak finale

The movie promise "The Walking Dead meets 28 Days Later", yeah, maybe if the lights were turned off and you were both blind and deaf...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 24 September 2019]

I was lured in by the promise stating "The Walking Dead meets 28 Days Later" on the cover of this movie. So yeah, I must admit that I had some expectations for this 2012 movie. Which, I oddly enough, hadn't heard of before stumbling upon it in 2019, and I am a huge zombie fan.

Nevertheless, I sat down to watch "After Effect", and when I saw that Daniel Baldwin was in it, I knew that the movie was not likely to live up to what was promised on the front cover. And right I was, because this was quite far from both "The Walking Dead" and "28 Days Later". This was something else alright.

The movie definitely had potential, I mean a group of people locked inside a testing facility to undergo some military experiment. But that is where it stopped, because the movie settled into stupidity and sluggish mediocrity pretty quickly. Director David McElroy didn't really come up with anything particularly great here.

For a zombie movie, "After Effect" was not delivering anything worthwhile, and it was hard to take most of the characters seriously. I mean, some of the things they did and said was just downright stupid. If you sign up for testing and getting paid, why would you turn all scared and start yelling and screaming when you are lead to a room and they close the door behind you.

"After Effect" was not a memorable movie, yet I managed to sit through the entirety of it, hoping that it would improve and turn out just semi-adequate. That just never happened.

My rating of "After Effect" is a mere three out of ten stars. The movie was sluggish, boring and just downright uneventful. It was crammed with pointless characters that you don't really care about, and writers David McElroy and Marc Menet just didn't make much of anything noteworthy here with this 2012 movie.

Bad After Taste

[shawnblackman · 4/10 · 3 November 2016]

The US army wants a new biological weapon and they are testing it on volunteer students who want to make a quick thousand dollars. Once a group is selected they are put into the facility equipped with cameras, then gassed which is how the drug is administered. They sit back and watch the results.

The drug makes them bleed from all orifices, then gives them a surge of energy making them incredibly strong wanting just to kill. They look like demon zombies. The difference in this film is that the infected people can be killed like how anybody could be. They don't take 50 bullets and keep going.

My only complaint is the overplayed premise and Daniel Baldwin's presence.

"You're doing your country a great service today"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 2/10 · 21 October 2023]

A group of people volunteer for a government sponsored medical research programme but there is something sinister afoot. This is a routine film with no excitement mainly consisting of people running wildly around the same corridors. The cast are forgettable and the characters they play are not appealing at all. I was waiting eagerly for them all to get killed. Which does happen eventually, the only good trope in the movie. The premise of the film is that the evil government as represented by Daniel Baldwin (hardly in it) are developing a gas which when sprayed on enemy soldiers will turn them into zombies so that they will kill each other. Which is a silly premise. The unoriginal script including such a hoary plot device as escaping through air vents shows the paucity of the writers' imagination. The after effect on me after watching the film was ennui.

Great Movie

[jdesalay · 9 October 2013]

Horror films are all the rage this year (World War Z, Insidious: Chapter 2, Carrie...) and After Effect is finally one worth watching. I hate horror movies, they give me awful headaches and I don't see the point of them. As soon as After Effect started, I changed my mind.

If you are looking for a movie that will leave you on the edge of your seat the whole time, this is that movie!!! Direction and acting are great, story line is very creative and still believable, hate those movies with ideas from left field. Definitely do not take your kids to see it, it was a little intense for a grown man like me but at the same time I wanted to see more. Hope they make a sequel the writing was creative and would love to see more from this writer.

The film is a visual masterpiece. Kirk Anderson gives an absolutely stunning performance, acting to absolutely nothing, yet always being right on the spot.

If you get a chance to see After Effect, go for it. David McElroy has outdone himself with this film, it's definitely a must see for horror film lovers.

TERRIBLE

[shelleym-87597 · 1/10 · 1 July 2020]

The only thing safer than this movie is me FOR WATCHING IT.

It's not bad... but not good either

[theangelsgameplayer · 5/10 · 12 July 2020]

So the movie isn't to bad practical effects wise. better effects then I expected for time and budget though some of the gore was very over the top. Clearly they had a limited budgest so they used set and style to hide limitations pretty well.

Movie opens with a 'chase' scene of a not SWAT team hearding a woman in scrubs into the woods and kiling her. Then it slows to a stop.

Slow meandering scenes of a collage class, then finding a flyer, then chilling in a dorm then arguing with a friend about going to a party then going through screening for a medical experiment then three jobs then arriving at a clinic. And it just keeps going but with nothing going on, it becomes this mind numbing drone of things that have no meaning to the movie but padding. It's not till the last third of the movie that it picks up into fun stupid movie junk but even then the plot itself is an 'idiot' plot It only works because every character is an idiot.

They even go through the trouble of establishing that two characters had done medical testing for money before, neither show any nerves or discomfort at the way this test is being run.

I would have liked to see more of the group but it's all basic stereotypes so you don't lose anything by not getting more about them.

While the creatures ate meant to be Undead, the characters have no way to know that and it's not even made clear to the audience untill much later.

I also find stories where everyone dies at the end frustrating. There are a couple dropped plot threads, you find out two of the characters where given a counter agent. It's implied but never outright stated on of them is Curtis, but the second one is never named and the closer you get to the end you feel like the writers jusy said "nvrmnd fam."

You need patience with this movie !

[honeybloggs-69648 · 1/10 · 7 December 2021]

Daniel Baldwin excelled himself in one of the worst movies , he's ever starred in ! And the lead actress Tuckie White (aka 'Lacie ) has hopefully given up acting as she has Zero talent . Further , The script was appalling with Lacie just saying the same thing!.

One of the characters said she felt like she hadn't eaten for days and was hungry. There was a vending machine in the room that she could have broken to grab a couple of chocolate bars , which of course she didn't do ( It would have been the highlight of the movie if she had ! )

There have been low budget movies made , which have been really good because the acting , directing and script have been excellent . However , none of those qualities existed in this movie . Also one of characters lost all her hair whilst turning into a Zombie but in the next scene she had a full head of hair! ( She needs to market that Zombie shampoo cos she'd make a fortune!)

Lame - all been done before and much better!

[phil-s-rose · 1/10 · 25 September 2014]

A mixed bag of students and poor people sign up to be test subjects for a new drug with the promise of $1000 for their time. Of course it turns out that it's the army secretly looking to test their latest bio weapon on the unsuspecting volunteers. For the first 30 minutes hardly anything happens as we follow our hapless lovers go about their dull lives. When we finally get the volunteers all in one place they are all dosed with the gas (strangely one by one rather than all together), which wastes away some more screen time. Then in for next 50 minutes or so there's lots of running around seemingly endless corridors with the victims screaming and shouting at each other as the gas slowly takes effect. Oh, and the "twist" is that two of the group have unknowingly been given a vaccine which is also under test and may or may not work. A fairly poor execution of a story that's been told many times before. Watch 28 Days Later instead

I don't understand all the bad ratings. There's so much worse out there...

[AndyVanScoyoc · 6/10 · 28 February 2019]

I liked this movie, so I'm not sure what everyone who's given it such bad reviews, was expecting.

Have you watched any other zombie or even horror films? This doesn't even qualify as bad if you've watched as many waste of time fests as I have.

Some of the dialogue was stupid, some of the scenes, stupider (if I was locked in a creepy hospital, the last thing I'd be thinking about is sex, I don't care how in love I am) but all in all, some of the dialogue was very realistic and sounded like actual conversation, rather than a script, which is impressive.

Far too many films, the dialogue is far too much like people practicing a part or reading for one, rather than actual dialogue that's supposed to be "believable."

Seriously...I don't get the trashing reviews.

I recommend this film and am glad I finally watched it, after passing it by in favor of so many pieces of vomitous toilet droppings I did end up watching.

Wasted time

[jenkinstom-72429 · 1/10 · 26 May 2015]

I cannot believe I wasted my time watching this movie. The only scary part of this movie was realizing that I actually paid to see it. The script is child like, the direction is not even there, and which Baldwin is this, oh yeah the one they kept locked up in the basement. About two minutes into the movie I actually wanted to just gouge my eyes out, but I thought it has to get better I mean it could not get any worse. I was really wrong in these lines of thinking, I read the previous reviews on here and thought this might not be a bad movie. These reviews must be relatives of someone involved in the film because no competent person could possibly find anything thrilling about this film. PLEASE DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE!!!!!

Surprisingly good

[brandonlewislaw · 8/10 · 16 September 2014]

Good acting. Good story. Good amount of gore. One negative..the reason behind the study. Way over the top. Overly ambitious and unrealistic. Movies like this have been done before. They've been done much better. The Killing Room would be an example. I take (and rate/compare) this movie for what it is. Low budget horror with unknown actors (besides Baldwin) and a pretty cool script. The movie has some bumps. You will roll your eyes a couple times during the Baldwin scenes. Other than that, no real complaints. The ending was especially well done. It doesn't take the easy route like most. I find the low rating bizarre. All I watch are horror movies. I've seen it all. I've seen plenty that deserve a 3. This isn't one of them. 8/10 on a low budget horror scale 5.5/10 horror in general scale

When Medical Research Goes Wrong

[eddie-32826 · 6/10 · 17 August 2019]

This is a pretty good zombie-type film.

So, this college student is a bit low on cash. She normally does three jobs to make ends meet, and then spots a way to earn some extra dough...medical research!!

We've all heard about it, loads of cash, some have placebo's, some have the real thing, and you can earn loads of cash.

But in this case, it turns out not to be a good investment plan. I know some have labelled it to be like 28 days later, but It's not, as they all sign up to be tested on. Things obviously turn for the worse, and I try not to give anything away, but it has a pretty good storyline, who knows who will become the next infected one, and who will survive.

Puerile, Badly Acted, Lousy Script, Lamentable Story...

[FountainPen · 1/10 · 14 September 2016]

If you can survive the first half hour, you'll probably be able to endure the balance of this dreadful cinematic effort. After a quite entertaining opening few action minutes and an irate Daniel Baldwin (yecchhh), the flick settles down into what appears to be a radio programme, with people just sitting around talking about nothing. These are people you will have zero empathy with -- vacant souls with no redeeming qualities. The gal "star" of this film has a coughing fit at one point which almost equals those of Hillary Clinton: this was a high point, believe it or not. The music! Oh! The music in this movie is ridiculous. Whoever chose it or created it needs to go back to school, along with all the actors and actresses, the scriptwriter, the director... well, you get the idea! As for the "lovemaking scene", dear dear me, how amateurish, how embarrassing, how laughable, ooh, aah, mmm... HA HA HA ! GIVE THIS A MISS!

Slop

[draftdubya · 2/10 · 18 June 2020]

No spoilers: Three of these turd movies about the same crap came out the same year. The Facility, Blood Work and this. This was the worst of the three. I couldn't rate any of them over a 3. This one is the worst. If you make it pass the classroom scene you might make it to the end.

Low Budget Indie Horror That's Probably Worth a Watch!

[icocleric · 4/10 · 23 September 2022]

You can tell it is low budget from the look right away, but it's not the worse I have seen. Made for TV level quality. The first 30 minutes or so are incredibly boring with pacing problems too, but once it picks up. It has some interesting things going on. The first 30 minutes are so dull I did actually almost switch off.

The set up is students signing up for a medical study, and they're being experimented on. They're locked up in a hospital, which actually is a great way to do this on a lower budget.

The first "zombie turning" was well done from a horror point of view. They're a bit different to "traditional zombies" but I think indies that play with ideas are pretty great.

The acting is extremely average. Again I've seen a lot worse. Like if the first 30 minutes wouldn't have been so dry it would have been a much more decent watch, but I did enjoy it after things got moving.

this was so poorly written

[AP-606 · 1/10 · 22 April 2024]

This movie was awful. It sounded like a good idea but the execution just did not work. First, there were several scenes where the characters spoke like AI. Then, there were so many scenes that just didn't make sense. For example, they let the Black girl who snuck in a cell phone get killed unnecessarily. As they were running from the zombie everyone made it into the room except her and so the "leader" guy slams the door in her face claiming there wasn't enough time to wait for her when in reality he could have easily let her in without the zombie coming in behind her. I thought this was going to build up to him being revealed as a "control subject" who's on the side of the military and so he was sabotaging their efforts to escape since she snuck in a cell phone or maybe he was a racist and/or sexist and killing off the women and Black guy one at a time despite the experiment. But no that scene led to no big reveal. He was just stupid and slammed the door in her face while she had the cell phone for no reason. Fast forward they want to try to get the cell phone and so he agrees to open the door and let Riley run out to grab it and run back in. Riley is being chased back by the zombie the same way the Black woman was and surprise no one shut the door on her face. Next, at the end when the main girl is the only one alive, she somehow on her own at one time took down 4 armed soldiers who were dressed in riot gear. How on Earth did trained soldiers let her gauge their eyes out and kill them with her soft punches? It made no sense at all. Then, they finally shoot her and the movie just ends. It's definitely wasnt worth the watch.

Nowhere near as good as it thinks it is

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 9 November 2018]

PATIENT Z: THE INFECTED is yet another indie horror film that's nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. Once again we have a tired plot about a bunch of hard-up students who volunteer for medical research at a remote facility. It's the usual gloomy enterprise in which a few zombies show up to wreak havoc, but it's all very slow and low key, and it really tests the patience too. At least Daniel Baldwin has the grace to look embarrassed by the whole thing.

Parental Guide

[gothicemokid · 2/10 · 12 August 2022]

Sex and nudity: A brief sex scene with movement. A woman is nude, breasts are shown. No other nudity is shown. Profanity: Lots of f-bombs, several uses of the Son's name in vain and The Lord's name in vain. Blood and gore: Extreme blood usage and moderate gore. Several people are shot. Intense and frightening scenes: Not a lot. It is a zombie movie after all.

Okay Indie Conspiracy Horror

[Theo Robertson · 6/10 · 22 April 2014]

A young woman running along a deserted road is pursued by men in black . She runs in to a woodlands and is shot by one of the men carrying a snipers rifle . As she lies dying in the snow she is then executed by a bullet

After this more than adequate opening hook we cut to a university lecture room where a tutor discusses stem cell research: : Yet another morally ambiguous topic . Is it ever ethical to sacrifice one embryo to save ten , twenty , a hundred , a thousand individuals ? " He goes around class asking this question and the students are perplexed and indecisive about giving an answer . This is something fundamentally wrong about this reaction . We are talking about an embryo . Something that is not developed in to any human form . In other words it's not yet human and doesn't qualify as a human being . It's an embryo not a human so asking questions like sacrificing something in order to save other human beings as if it's the same equivalent as a human is a non sequiter .. You can guess this is an American film and one hopes that in real life the average American student is more cerebral than the muppets seen here who are no doubt registered with the more right wing elements of the Republican party

I did perhaps notice a slight agenda with this film . One of those students then signs up for a medical experiment with an organisation calling itself " Systems and science " and they're the bad guys . There is of course nothing wrong with a horror film making political comments and I did enjoy 28 WEEKS LATER which featured an American taskforce repopulating a devastated land and then having to destroy it in order to save the wider international community . Hardly a subtle subtext but one that is recognisable and appreciated at the same time . As the characters of the experiment are introduced someone makes a joke about Noah but there's no blatantly faith good science bad soapbox shouting and I probably over analysed this a bit too much . It is of course a low budget indie horror thriller and the message carried is " trust no one especially where the government is concerned " . You've seen this type of idea before and because you've seen it so many times it's not stand out in any way and if you don't like horror movies you won't like this . It does manage to generate a few scary moments and meets expectations

Friday Night Thriller

[uofacowboy-518-365423 · 9/10 · 13 October 2013]

I really enjoyed this film. I felt that it was a great Friday night flick. An entertaining film that gives you what you are looking for when you want to watch a thriller/scary movie with your buddies. Covers all the bases to engage you with the plot and characters. I don't think that the story line is new, however, I thought it was well written and the actors did a great job to capture my attention. After Effect has several great action scenes that have point of view shots that I thought were very cool and would make Michael Bay jealous. There were also these transition shots that brought you in from being a viewer to being apart of the experiment. Felt like that was extremely creative. A thriller film must have gruesome special effects to set it apart. When I watch an alien/zombie type movie, make up and effects, better be awesome to keep the story "real" and me believing. Now because of After Effect I have to ask myself how desperate in need of cash do I have to be in order to participate in a paid research study. Damn these movies and their psychological effects! NO spoilers here, see the movie!