Two morticians begin work on a pair of corpses in a modern, pristine morgue. The two men, dressed in blue surgical scrubs with only their eyes showing, dissect the cadavers silently, only briefly looking up to glance at each others work. A hospital porter, curious to see what’s going on, appears at the doorway. The leading mortician (Pep Tosar) notices him; his eyes convey his anger at the voyeuristic intrusion, and the porter hurries off. They continue the autopsies in silence with a cold precision. The second mortician finishes and leaves Tosar’s character alone with a young female corpse. His eyes betray his heightened arousal as he slowly undresses the body and caresses it with his knife, before savagely violating the dead woman and taking her heart home to feed his dog.

I admit to expecting Aftermath to be a low budget, gory exploitation shocker along the lines of Nekromantik, but how wrong I was. Nekromantik was entertaining enough in it’s own sleazy way, but this film is something rather special. The titles roll like a big budget Hollywood drama, accompanied by beautiful choral music as the camera leads us into the morgue, bathed in a blue light, where most of the story is set.  Almost straight away the autopsies begin, shocking and graphic, but detached and clinical. One of the corpses is an actor and the other 2 bodies created for the film are amazingly realistic. The combination of quality direction and camera work, and the unsettling subject matter makes Aftermath a unique and disturbing, but also fascinating and wonderfully crafted film. True corpse-fucking art.  S.J.T.

Aftermath. 1994

Directed by Nacho Cerdà

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