‘After Last Season’: the surreal indie film often called one of the worst movies of all time
It takes a special kind of movie to debut a trailer that’s greeted with such bemusement that a large number of people convinced themselves it was an elaborate prank to market an entirely unrelated project from an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. However, that’s only part of what makes After Last Season so bizarre.
Written, directed, produced, and with cinematography by Mark Region – which probably isn’t even his real name – it’s a truly bizarre work of cinema. Even the story is preposterous, not that it’s even made clear in the trailer. It’s a sort of existential murder mystery with supernatural elements, none of which is displayed or even made remotely clear in the promotional footage.
What is made apparent is that the budget was virtually non-existent, and the actors fail to convince anyone watching that they’ve experienced human emotion before. There’s no world in which a crudely assembled array of pieces – including a fair amount of cardboard – can be seen as an MRI machine.
Jason Kulas’ Matthew Andrews and Peggy McClellan’s Sarah Austin are medical interns who find themselves caught up in a murder mystery when a serial killer embarks on a spree, forcing them to use experimental technology to visualise the crimes. These ‘visions’ are replicated through the shoddiest of digital effects, and the culprit also happens to be a ghost. Oh, and it’s all a dream, so sorry for the spoiler.
The debut trailer for After Last Season captured the internet’s imagination to such an extent that whispers began making the rounds that Spike Jonze was behind it. He’d decided to embark upon a typically offbeat viral marketing campaign to drum up his anticipation for the impending release of his adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.
As it turned out, even the people starring in the thing were gripped by questions as to whether Jonze was the mastermind pulling the strings all along. “I saw the crazy conspiracy theory rumours out there,” Kulas admitted to Entertainment Weekly. “And I even discussed them with some of the actors from the production going, ‘What do you think?'”.
He then suggested that Mark Region “probably” isn’t the real name of the multi-hyphenate creator, who declined to speak to EW and only conversed with Filmmaker Magazine via email without supplying a picture of his face. He was working in real estate at the time, but what really stuck out were the inspirations he named, presumably with the utmost seriousness. “Just thrillers – The Sixth Sense, maybe that had some influence, The Exorcist,” he said. “But really, when I did this film, I didn’t have them in mind. This is something different that I wanted to do.”
Some have even gone as far as to suggest After Last Season is either a deliberate comedy or an abstract work of avant-garde genius. As admirable as that opinion is, it wasn’t the director’s intention. “We first listed the film as a drama and a thriller on IMDb,” he admitted. “For many not intended reasons related to the trailer, it became listed as a comedy on Apple.”
As for its accidental abstract nature, it was all down to a lack of funds. The laughable MRI machine “looked pretty good from far away” despite being “made from cardboard and bits of plastic”, while the sparse backdrops were caused by only having “enough money to shoot the film and not enough for production design”.
And yet, Region dropped the incredulous bombshell that when all of the costs were factored in After Last Season ended up costing $5million all told. After watching the trailer, everyone will be in agreement that it doesn’t quite add up.
