Movies, like just about every other art form, are manipulative. For each one, there are hundreds of people working together to make the audience laugh or cry, feel uplifted or depressed. The best movies, and the best filmmakers, can achieve the desired emotional response without the audience ever being aware it’s happening. That is not the case with Aftermath. This is a movie that is relentless in telling the audience just how they should feel, and whose makers – most egregiously, director Elliott Lester, and composer Mark Todd – throw subtlety completely aside. There are elements that work against this trend, one performance in particular, but they aren’t enough to salvage the rest.
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If you had asked me for my immediate reaction when I learned there was a new Terminator movie coming out, I would have rolled my eyes and asked why they were even bothering. This is a franchise that had more than worn out its welcome. The first two films in the series are classics. Director James Cameron built an exciting world and mythology in The Terminator, and then exceeded audience expectation in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, not an easy thing to do. When Cameron moved on to other creative endeavors, the property began to suffer.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines didn’t carry anywhere near the weight of its predecessors. The TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was mostly uneven, but at times fairly entertaining. Then 2009’s Terminator Salvation, a completely forgettable mess directed by McG that was mind-numbingly boring. The franchise seemed to be sapped of all creative energy. So, when Terminator Genisys was announced, I wasn’t expecting much. They couldn’t even spell genesis right, for crying out loud! Imagine my surprise when, thirty minutes in, I turned to my partner and whispered, “I am REALLY into this!”
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