Dead Space Aftermath Review

• 13th Jan 2011

With the imminent release of the game Dead Space 2, Anchor Bay Entertainment and Manga will release Dead Space Aftermath on Blu-ray and DVD. The story will follow the ending of the first Dead Space game released in 2008 which is one of the most terrifying and gut wrenching games ever made.

Dead Space Aftermath features several internationally renowned animation directors that use their unique and bold visions to explain what happened during the USG O’Bannon’s mission to Aegis 7.

Directors Mike Disa (Dante’s Inferno : An Animated Epic, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs Evil), Tae-Ho Han (What’s New Scooby-Doo?), Sang-Jin Kim (Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, Jail Breakers), Jong-Shik Nam (Spiral Zone, Batman Gotham Knight) and Lee Seung-Gyu (Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic) do this through the perspective of four survivors in this fast-paced horrifying thrill ride.

Dead Space Aftermath also boasts a stellar voice cast led by Christopher Judge (Stargate: SG-1, X-Men animations), Peter Woodward (Babylon 5, Charmed, Fringe), Graham McTavish (upcoming theatrical release of The Hobbit), Ricardo Chavira (Desperate Housewives) and Gwendoline Yeo (Star Wars: The Clone Wars).

Ok… Let’s see if I can give you the background on what went down previously.

The USG Ishimura is a planet cracker (mining ship) that travels to newlydiscovered planets and mines for minerals and precious rocks.  In this case, the damned destination was the planet Aegis 7 in the Cygnus System. The USG Ishimura received a message from a deep space mining colony that they had picked up unusual seismic activity and, following protocol, the colony had to check out any strange signals they received. Unfortunately for them the seismic activity was from an alien artefact (The Red Marker). Now, this artefact causes the mind of anyone it comes into contact (with me so far?) to suffer hyper-psychotic hallucinations that makes the affected go on a killing spree. Once there are dead bodies, the Red Marker has a nasty habit of regenerating them and transforming the freshly murdered bodies into hideous Necromorphs which kill everything in sight. This was the fate that befell the USG  Ishimura.

The USG Kellian was on a nearby mining mission and the Concordance Extraction Corporation (CEC) decided to send the it to investigate what happened to the USG Ishimura. A battle of life and gory death ensues. Whilst fighting off the hordes of relentless, disfigured Necromorphs the Red Marker is forcibly returned to the planet surface by Isaac Clarke (the protagonist from the Dead Space games).  After one last climactic battle, Issac Clark escapes with his life and what little sanity he has left. He leaves Ageis in a very unstable situation after causing a large chunk of rock (the size of a continent) to go plunging into the planet (phew, now on with the review.)

Now, with the lights off and the glare of the TV throwing my silhouette on the wall behind me the scene is set. I don’t watch all my films like this; only the films that require ambience to enhance the experience, and by god, after the last outing in the Dead Space universe I know for a fact I’m in for an unrelenting gore-fest.

Be warned that from the outset,  it’s clear this movie isn’t for kids. Dead Space Aftermath easily matches the violence and gore of the game itself.

It’s now 2509 and the crew of the USG O’Bannon have been sent to get exposed to the Red Marker shards as the Government wants to know exactly what happens when humans are exposed to it as they are secretly trying to produce a viable Marker blueprint, no matter the costs.

The crew believe they have been sent on a secret mission to stop the planet Aegis from blowing up as it is now on the brink of destruction (due to the efforts of one Issac Clarkes fight for survival). Soon the USG O’Bannon gets tainted by a piece of the Red Marker which had been brought back from the planet’s surface and the ships fate is sealed, just as that of the others before it.

As the ship is severely damaged and drifts lifeless in space with floating dismembered body parts floating outside (a quick gulp of my Chamomile tea to calm the nerves, maybe I should switch the lights back on) a secret government search and rescue vessel arrives in the Cygnus System looking for survivors.

The marine rescue party finds four survivors out of a crew of 137. They are taken to the rescue ship where they are interrogated one by one by a ruthless lead questioner who is under direct instructions to find out which of the four survivors came into contact with the Red Marker and to get answers about what happened on the USG O’Bannon. This is so the government can concoct a cover story that can be spoon fed to the waiting press so they can continue their underhanded and very dangerous experiments. The lead interrogator has been given seven hours by his superiors to achieve this by any means necessary.

When the survivors are eventually interrogated they recall the violent mayhem that took place on board the USG O’Bannon and these flashbacks are in full on manga animation. Now, Dead Space Aftermath is a strange sort of CGI. The CGI segments and each of the four flashback’s animations depicting the survivor’s versions of events are never there same. For instance, Dr Isabel Cho looks different in the CGI segments and her appearance totally changes along with the rest of the crew for each of the flashbacks (if you leave the room for whatever reason and come back, you will be asking yourself ‘who is that?’ or ‘what’s going on?’) In doing this it makes the whole visual experience feel a bit disjointed at first but you’ll soon over look this as the story is very well told and the script keeps with the whole ethos of the Dead Space experience.

This is indeed an enjoyable piece of work. EA and Visceral Games have done a fantastic job in expanding the graphic horror at zero gravity with Anchor Bay Entertainment and Manga and have continuously pleased fans of the series with their crossovers into other mediums such as comics and novels.

Dead Space Aftermath is a welcome addition which provides a crucial back-story that needs to be experienced if you’re a hard-core fan of the series.

Donnie Tulloch