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Parents' Guide to

Aftershock

By Jeffrey Anderson, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Horror/disaster hybrid is gory, brutal, cruel, and unfunny.

Movie R 2013 89 minutes
Aftershock Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 18+

Based on 2 parent reviews

age 18+

Very hopeless movie. But functional.

Everyone dies horribly, often if not always after trying to help someone. The person they help often ends up dying horribly too. Competently made. Some scenes may be a bit too shakey and choppily edited but filmmaking is mostly stable. The characters arent anything new but the first 40 min establishes thier relationships and how they are challenged amongst a grave disaster and see the evil of humanity unleashed. How they live and vire life has a decent affect on how twe recieve thier suffering later on. The humor is hit or miss. The tension and hopeless and paranoid fear is all there. Tho i didnt like how the final stretch briefly turns the movie into a hackneyed slasher movie for no reason, turning a sympathetic character into a mostly psycho maniac out of nowhere. A woman is raped twice, one offscreen and we hear her crying. A man trying to help her is doused in liquor and burned to death (gruesome charred corpse seen several times). The second is onscreen from behind the rapist. Shes then shot (blood pools) when she tries to get away after a man bloodily kills the rapist with an ax. A man is hit in chest ith an ax and has it pushed in bloodily. A man had his hands chopped off by a fallen shelf. His bloody stump seen several times before its wrapped up. The severed hand is kicked around alot. Many bloody bodies seen in debris including a baby in car seat. A man is pinned under debris and a fat thug sits on it to interrogate him. The characters are covered in blood throughout. A riot cop is set on fire with a molotov. A man is shot in chest. A person rises from a man hole and has thier face hit by a car. Thier bloody remains fall to floor. Metal pole stuck in leg and blood spurts as its pulled out. Grisly mumified babies are seen. Brief pot smoking. Pic of scrotum on phone.
age 18+

No.

No.

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much sex
Too much swearing

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (4 ):

At times it seems like Aftershock is trying to be funny -- with disastrous results -- and at other times, it's heart-stoppingly serious, as in the horrifying rape scene. The movie spends at least a third of its running time establishing the "characters" who will soon be terrorized, but they still seem, for the most part, horribly flat and highly unlikable. It's just as well, since the filmmakers also don't seem to care about them. Gomez appears in the film's only good scene, coldly rebuffing Roth's advances in a nightclub.

Roth has a cult following for directing the gory Hostel "torture porn" movies, but lately he's become more of a celebrity, appearing on screen in various cameos and silly roles in other movies. With AFTERSHOCK, he's co-written a lead role for himself and handed the directorial reins over to Chilean filmmaker Nicolas Lopez. The result is supposed to be a subversive hybrid of disaster movies and gory horror, but it's uncertain where the two actually meet.

Movie Details

  • In theaters: May 10, 2013
  • On DVD or streaming: August 6, 2013
  • Cast: Andrea Osvart , Eli Roth , Selena Gomez
  • Director: Nicolas Lopez
  • Inclusion Information: Female actors, Latino actors
  • Studios: Dimension , Radius TWC
  • Genre: Horror
  • Run time: 89 minutes
  • MPAA rating: R
  • MPAA explanation: strong bloody violence including rape, language, drug content and some nudity
  • Last updated: June 20, 2023

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