Tonight's short film begins with two morticians separately working on two different corpses. Dressed in a stereotypical surgeon getup, the two men work quietly and meticulously, only stopping to glare at a passerby who felt the need to poke his head in the room.One man finishes and goes home, while the other decides to stick around and work on another one. His next choice: a woman who died in a car accident earlier that evening. He begins the autopsy, which while gruesome, is realistic and normal. Then things suddenly take a turn when he decides to lock the doors, shut the blinds, and pull out the "special" bag. What follows is a truly disturbing series of events that culminates in a vile and shocking twist.

If you're looking for a very realistic depiction of an autopsy scene, followed up by some necrophilia, you've come to the right place. I went into this movie expecting a short film that included a semi-believable autopsy scene, and some low budget effects. Boy was I wrong. I don't know how much money went into special effects - probably all of it - but it was worth every penny. I don't think I've seen a more realistic looking corpse in film before. Cerda knew this too, as he purposely allowed the camera to linger on the bodies for an extended period of time, daring you to look for imperfections and flaws. Happy to say folks, I saw nothing. Nothing but a fantastic looking cadaver, which was sliced, sawed, sewed and skewered all within the view of the lens. Nothing says cheap effects like a quick camera cutaway, and this certainly didn't happen in this film. Two thumbs up from yours truly in the effects department.

There is no dialogue in this film, so Cerda had to rely on strong visuals and a good musical backdrop to make this film work. I don't know how he did it, but he managed to make the gore and horrific images seem beautiful and artistic with his wonderful camera techniques and powerful music. The film opens with Mozart's classic Requiem, and the rest of the musical cues are just as melodic and domineering. It's only 30 minutes in length, and with no dialogue whatsoever, the music really carries you through. The entire time I was watching this, I was trying to recall what it reminded me of, after watching it a second time it hit me - American Psycho. At the very least, the opening scene to American Psycho, with it's cold and sterile feeling. No matter what's being displayed on the screen, it always feels like everything is pristine and clean. It's a hard thing to explain, but the visuals speak for themselves.

I wouldn't recommend this one to a lot of you out there. It's a great film, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. I for one enjoyed it, but I can definitely see it turning a few people off. If you're a fan of the red stuff you'll enjoy it, but not like you think you will. If you're into film more for the artistic side, this one's for you. Either way you slice it, I think it's a film that needs to be watched by film lovers.

8/10.

How you approach this 30 minute short will definitely dictate your level of enjoyment once Aftermath ends. If you go in hoping for gore galore, the closest thing to seeing real dead bodies defiled this side of a snuff film, you've actually come to the right place. While Cerdà's control of his camera is excellent, the F/X are out of this world. Corpses tend to be difficult sells on film. They usually come across as mannequins or non-pliable piles of foam rubber and latex. But the work here is top notch. These cadavers have weight, and resistance, a true sense of their former human physicality. The filmmaker makes the most of this, allowing the lens to view the disgusting, nauseating nature of a coroner's post-mortem work.

If you have heard that Aftermath is the Spanish Nekromantik, another slice of perverted pleasure about sex with the dead, you'll probably be disappointed. There is none of the lunatic relish of Jörg Buttgereit's blasphemous little film. Instead, Cerdà is shooting for the serial killer side of the coin, to emphasize the normalcy in his protagonist's professionalism while simultaneously proving how truly sick he really is. The necrophilia in this movie is very disturbing. It is not just carnal; it is filled with volatility and extreme violence. While nothing is shown outright (our doctor defiles the corpse's privates with a knife before 'mounting' her), the implication is repellent enough. Indeed, one could argue that Cerdà is making a larger point about defying death. But it's a hard sell. Treating the departed as nothing more than a plaything for the fulfillment of one's most twisted desires almost erases any grander theme. While the ending is quite unnerving, the rest of Aftermath is an equally uneasy ordeal. You may see nothing more in it than fetishism gone foul, however. Or you may see something very insightful.

Cerda wrote, directed, and produced this 30-minute exercise in extreme visceral horror. He ultimately intended for it to be part of a much larger film (one that was to run for over 2 hours).

Unfortunately, financial problems necessitated cutting down the film--something that may have actually worked to Aftermath's advantage: Few audience members could have withstood the 120-plus minutes of visual assault that Cerda had planned.

So, instead of a longer meditation on the sexual deviancy known as necrophilia, Cerda hits us with a fast-paced vignette--albeit one that packs quite a wallop, from the opening shot (perfectly complemented by Mozart's famous Requiem) right through to the end credits.

Pep Tosar plays the lead character, a mortician working in what appears to be a local hospital. We watch as he goes about his duty, hid away from us behind his blue surgical scrubs and a mask that covers roughly half his face.

His "patients" are splayed out on the table before him, and we watch as he performs some incredibly realistic autopsies. Clothes are cut off with little regard; Y-cut incisions are made in the chest; organs are removed, weighed, and catalogued; and the cranial cavity is emptied.

There's a clinical sense of detachment to these events--one that stands in stark contrast to the intimacy that is to come. Tosar is unfazed by the blood, the gore, the nudity--he's merely a man doing a job.

However, once finished with his work on the male cadavers, he discovers the battered, bloody, and ultimately dead body of Marta. I won't lie to you--there's nothing pretty about Marta in death. Yet, Tosar seems almost powerless in her presence. After checking to make sure he won't be disturbed, he cuts her clothes off and begins slowly caressing her with a surgical blade.

There's an air of ritual or fetish in these first movements--Tosar swirls the blade around her nipples, slides it casually down her sternum and over her stomach, and repeats the motion.

Soon, though, things become more intense--the blade draws blood. From here, it gets really wild--Tosar rapes the corpse vaginally with the scalpel, slamming it home while grunting in an animalistic fashion.

It's intense and savage and violent--and even though Marta can't feel a thing, the viewer may feel a twinge of sorrow that she must endure this final defilement.

Cerda doesn't stop there, though. Before long, Tosar's masturbating furiously to his handiwork. After that, he's photographing it. Then, he's photographing himself atop the corpse, forcing himself into the butchered vaginal cavity. Once finished, he takes one last piece of Marta, an internal organ that appears to be her heart.

We finish Aftermath watching Tosar's character at home, his dog eating the pureed remains of the organ. I'll leave the potential ramifications of the scene's meaning to you, to figure out on your own.

Aftermath is certainly not for the easily disturbed or weak of stomach. But though its subject matter and level of graphic displays are disturbing, it's also one of the most beautiful films I've seen in some time.

Cerda and cinematographer Christopher Baffa have created a visually arresting film that succeeds not just because of the on-screen gore, but also because of the assured camera movements, the interesting use of color, and the decision to use 35-millimeter film (as opposed to something cheaper).

It becomes readily apparent early on that Cerda isn't your average exploitation hack looking to make a name for himself solely by titillating his audience. Cerda and Baffa's decisions concerning how to shoot each scene have far more in common with the stylistic excesses of Dario Argento than the more straightforward exploitative work of someone like Umberto Lenzi.

There's clearly an aesthetic at work here, and the camera prowls along ominously in some scenes, performs the requisite Fulci-style zooms on gore effects in others, and sits distant and motionless in a few as well. Each camera movement seems carefully considered, and designed to add something to the scene in question.

Aftermath, like Tosar, is bathed mostly in ethereal blues that seem designed both to create an oddly relaxing atmosphere and to contrast completely with the blood and gore.

The choice of color creates a visual and emotional dichotomy--the blue is serene, yet there's nothing serene going on in the blue room. At the very least, this is designed to place an unsettling and conflicting set of emotions in the viewer--one that gnaws at the subconscious just as likely as the gore work gnaws at your stomach.

Finally, the decision to use 35-millimeter film stock (instead of the much more affordable 8- or 16-millimeter that the Nekromantik films utilized) works in Aftermath's favor as well. The choice here gives Cerda's film a much more polished and professional look overall--something that the Nekromantik films were clearly missing.

The visuals and direction are superb, but many folks will grab Aftermath looking for some solid gore and a disturbing story--and I'm happy to report that it gets high marks on both counts.

The story itself is far more graphic (and, let's face it, interesting) than either of Buttgereit's pretentious films on the same subject. Cerda doesn't beat around the bush-he promises necrophilia, and he delivers--and he doesn't film it with a soft-focus, blurry lens, either.

The gore work was done by an FX group called DDT, and it's very impressive stuff. The cadavers look quite real; so does the dissected dog shown in the very early part of the credits.

This is some of the best gore work I've seen since catching two episodes of the popular Japanese Guinea Pig series, "Flower of Flesh and Blood," and "Mermaid in a Manhole," a few years back. If you're squeamish or easily put off by graphic imagery, be sure to give Aftermath a wide berth.

This review wouldn't be complete without mentioning the brilliant performance from Tosar. The actor has the very difficult task of spending most of the film dressed in surgical scrubs, with half of his face obscured by a mask. This forces him to act mainly with his body posture and his eyes--a difficult undertaking for any actor.

Making matters even more complicated: Aftermath doesn't feature a single line of dialogue--a few grunts and moans, but nothing in the way of spoken words. Tosar does an admirable job in such a limited role, though--I was both fearful of him and fascinated by him for the entire film.

Neither Tosar nor Cerda ever gives us concrete answers about the character's motivations--this never allows us to formulate any kind of opinion about what drives him.

Overall, Aftermath has a very limited audience. Its graphic take on some very upsetting subject matter is sure to offend just about everyone. And yet, it's surprisingly well-made.

Simply put, Aftermath has taken necrophilia to the level of artform--I can only look forward to whatever new strange delights Nacho Cerda has in store for us in the future. Aftermath gets 5 stars from me.