A senator is on the golf course. He’s lining up his shot when an assistant ambles over and hands him a phone. Within seconds we can see the news is not good. With a few gratuitous expletives he calmly but firmly orders, “clean it up.”
Next scene we see a black sedan and SUV racing along a wooded rural road. Up ahead a woman in nurses scrubs is running. She veers off the road and makes a run for the treeline. The vehicles pull up to an embankment and three men in tactical gear sporting AR-15 rifles jump out of the SUV and start running after her. A “suit” steps out of the sedan and gets on the phone staying near his car.
The girl is running for her life and about 50 yards behind her the “tacticals” are giving chase. One of the tacticals stops at a felled tree and lines up a shot at the fleeing girl. As we hear him exhale he pulls the trigger and the bullet find it’s mark dead center in the girls back. She falls. The soldier runs up to the girl who’s lying on the ground with a hole in her back as well as blood furiously pumping out of her chest. The soldier gets on his phone, pulls out his sidearm, and executes a head shot.
Fade to black.
We’re transported to a university lecture hall which is in session and lights out. Projected on the wall is a still of what I believe is one of the test explosions of an atomic bomb. A huge pillar of fire can be seen reaching for the sky capped by the iconic “mushroom” cloud. The professor is quizzing the students and wants opinions. “If one man can be sacrificed to save thousands, could you do it?” Without further context he quizzes the students who give well informed and serious answers. He calls on one of the girls and asks, “what about you, what do you think?” The girl looks confused and says she’s not sure. The professor states that non-committal answers aren’t the way to succeed in his class.
After Effect is a bit of a slow burn during the first half of the movie. We are introduced to our protagonist who’s studying in her dorm room. A male friend comes over and invites her to a party. The girl states she has a lot of studying to do and no amount of coaxing from dude is going to sway her opinion. Good for her. Next we see her walking around campus as she passes a message board. There’s a flyer offering $$$ for some study but there’s no details. She grabs the flyer. Hey, write down the number or put it in your phone. Leave the flyer for someone else to see. For the safety of the general public however it’s fortuitous for them she did pocket the flyer.
She heads back to her dorm. Calling the number on the flyer she gets a recording. She leaves a message, hangs up and not even a minute passes when the phone rings. A short conversation is had and she’s given directions of where she needs to go to apply for the study. A few days go by and the next scene shows her driving to a nondescript office building at the far edge of town ready for the study. There are 7 other college age students attending and most don’t care what the study is about; they’re in it for the $1000. They all get introduced, are placed in nurses scrubs, and are left in a recreation room awaiting dinner.
Eventually a person in charge shows up and let’s them know they’ve been chosen for a study to test the effectiveness of a pill for combat soldiers. They’re assured it’s perfectly safe with the only side effect being a sense of euphoria. Though some feign concern it’s implied the $1000 allows them to throw caution to the wind.
A nurse enters the scene and our students are called in one by one. Our protagonist is called last and is escorted to an unfurnished room with concrete floors. She’s thrown into the room by a pair of tactical dudes and the door is quickly locked behind her. On one wall is two way mirror. Our protagonist starts to panic. She approaches the two way mirror and attempts to see through the glass as she continues to whimper. On the other side of the glass the person in charge says, “Turn on the gas.” Our protagonist starts a violent bout of coughing and throws up on the floor. Eventually she lies down on the floor unconscious.
Some time later a pair (the same pair?) of tactical dudes are seen carrying her down a hallway. Her room is located and she is abruptly thrown into her bed, still unconscious.
It turns out that the gas they are exposed to for the study is actually a state sanctioned bio weapon which causes one to become zombie like crazy and they attack and kill anyone they come in contact with. Eventually everyone succumbs to the study and is either killed by each other or in the case of our poor protagonist gets gunned down by tactical dudes after putting up a really good bio weapon infused fight.
The final scene is of the senator on the phone with someone higher up in the government stating the “study” was a resounding success and will be ready for production immediately. Which government are we talking about? Well the United States of America of course. The ending is played real cool; par for the course. Another successful weapon of mass destruction makes it through it’s testing phases and is ready for deployment. All at the cost of 8 random college students who had no idea what they were getting into pulling a random flyer off of the community peg board at college. I guess we’re suppose to feel sad for the 8 students who died for nothing. I’m kinda sad I watched the whole movie.
It’s classic B movie fodder filled with unknown actors plus one of the Baldwin brothers, the one you rarely see but in the B movies.
The slow burn in the beginning actually helped the movie along and built up the suspense required to get me to watch the whole thing. Formulaic? Maybe. It was semi-entertaining and if you’re a guy I think one of the “college” students is actual an porn star who shows off her very expensive tits. Had to look her up and sure enough, Lily Hex is a porn star. So there’s that.
I’ll give it a C but I surely wouldn’t recommend it. It does get one thinking however. Is the United States government capable of something like this? Killing off 8 random college students just to get the write off on a bioweapon for the military? We’d like to say no way but history tells us different.
After Effect was dubbed an action/horror/thriller and directed by David McElroy. Written by David McElroy and Marc Menet. Featuring Daniel Baldwin, Tuckie White, Matthew Lucki, a porn star, Kamillion, Zak Hawkins and a bunch of other people you wouldn’t know, though John Turk did look familiar (another porn star?). Running time of 1 hour and 35 minutes. Not Rated and Released in 2012 with an IMDb rating of 4.0/10.