“ | The End was only the Beginning | ” |
Dead Space: Aftermath is a full-length animation feature released on January 24, 2011. Comprised of both 3D and 2D animation (the latter in a similar style to Dead Space: Downfall), the film explores the aftermath of the USG Ishimura incident and is set mainly aboard the USG O'Bannon, which is sent to Aegis VII to stabilize its gravity and secretly search for fragments of Marker 3A.
Plot Description[]
“ | The year is 2509 and not only has Earth lost contact with the Ishimura and Isaac Clarke, but now also the USG O'Bannon, the first responder ship sent to rescue them. Four crew members of the O'Bannon have survived. But what happened to the rest of the crew? What were they doing? What secrets are they keeping? All to be revealed...in the Aftermath! Dead Space: Aftermath is a fast paced, horrifying thrill ride told through the perspective of the four survivors by several renowned international directors.[3] | ” |
Plot Summary[]
Three weeks after having lost contact with the USG Ishimura, the Aegis VII Colony and the USG Kellion, the Concordance Extraction Corporation sends the USG O'Bannon to investigate, but soon loses contact with the O'Bannon as well.
Some time later, the EarthGov Destroyer-class interceptor USM Abraxis shocks to the O'Bannon. A five-man EDF Marine rescue team boards the ship and finds the mutilated corpses of the crew scattered throughout its halls. The Marines' scanners detect that four people are still alive within the Engineering Deck. The Marines make their way to the Engineering Deck and meet the survivors: Nickolas Kuttner, an ex-Marine security officer; Alejandro Borges, an engineer with a robotic arm; Nolan Stross, Chief Science Officer; and Dr. Isabel Cho, Chief Medical Officer. Kuttner kills one of the Marines after screaming about how he won't let them harm his daughter. The Marines incapacitate them and take them to the Abraxis. The Abraxis then destroys the O'Bannon and shocks out of the Aegis system. The four find themselves in a holding cell on the Abraxis, heading to the Sprawl, an EarthGov space station built around the last remaining fragment of Titan, one of Saturn's moons. The Lead Interrogator is told by the Overseer he has seven hours to get information from the survivors before the Abraxis reaches the Sprawl.
Kuttner is interrogated first. They use his fear of being burned alive to get him to cooperate. All the while Kuttner hallucinates his deceased daughter, Vivian, who was killed in a vehicular accident mere weeks prior to the mission. He was in a conference room on the O'Bannon with Cho, Stross, a surveyor named Rin and their leader, Commander Sergenko. Borges enters the room with his 19-year-old cousin Noah and Omar, a Unitologist. All three were picked up from the Sprawl. Captain Campbell enters and explains that crews will stabilize the gravity on Aegis VII, then dismisses the engineers. Campbell then explains that Kuttner's crew are to bring back surviving fragments of the Marker, which are worth millions of credits. The crew and engineers land on Aegis VII, which has become dangerously unstable. While the engineers work on the gravity stabilizer, Kuttner's crew splits up. Kuttner finds a shard of the Marker which has a terrible effect on him. It causes him to start seeing visions of his deceased daughter. His hallucination worsens as he sees the crew as Necromorph-like monsters trying to cause harm to Vivian, which causes him to go berserk and attack the engineers. He kills Noah and causes the stabilizer to malfunction. After he snaps out of the fit, he questions what happened to Noah, unaware of what he had done. Borges then knocks Kuttner out of rage for what he had done to his the former's cousin. The crew restrains Kuttner inside of the shuttle as they continue with the mission.
After giving his account, the restraints are removed. Before he can be restrained and put in a stasis pod, Kuttner grabs a pistol from one of the Security Officers and shoots his way through some of the Security detail, as well as one of the lead interrogator's assistants. Kuttner makes his way through the halls of the O'Bannon chasing after his daughter before he gets shot by a couple of Marines who he subsequently dispatches. He sees Vivian walk through an airlock. As the Marines and Security Guards hurry towards Kuttner to stop him from opening the airlock. Kuttner manages to do so despite their pleas and they are jettisoned into space, killing them all. Kuttner hallucinates being reunited with his Vivian as he dies.
They bring in Borges for interrogation afterwards. After exploiting his arachnophobia, Borges explains that the crew made it to the shuttle, but Rin, Sergenko and Omar were killed. Borges was forced to crash-land the shuttle onto the O'Bannon. Aegis VII explodes seconds before the ship can shock out. The cluster of debris from Aegis VII causes severe damage to the ShockPoint Drive. Still enraged over the death of his cousin, Borges demands to know the importance of the Marker shard. When the captain explains the shard's monetary value, Borges violently assaults him. After Cho and Stross calm him down, he follows the captain's order to fix the ShockPoint Drive.
After giving his account, the Lead Interrogator thanks Borges for his cooperation and assures the engineer that he will be able to go home. He then has Borges killed on his way out. He sends in for Nolan Stross to be interrogated and gets Stross to cooperate after using Stross's claustrophobia against him. Stross' account begins after getting the Marker shard on the O'Bannon. Stross was on the O'Bannon with his wife and son, but his duties and his wife's suspicions about him having an affair with another crew member were taking a toll on their relationship. He begins to study the Marker shard, which begins to affect him in the same manner as Kuttner. He sees Marker symbols everywhere and begins to obsess over the Marker. He tries to explain to the captain how the Marker was possibly designed by a higher power; and how it takes dead flesh and restructures the DNA, improving upon it. To prove this theory, he takes a body from the morgue and exposes it to the shard. The corpse transforms into a Necromorph, which he accidentally lets loose and it begins killing and transforming crew members throughout the ship. Stross runs to his living quarters and kills his wife and son, under the hallucination that they were Necromorphs. The lead interrogator, realizing that Stross can communicate with the Marker, has him stored in a Stasis pod, much to the latter's fear of confining spaces.
Despite getting what he needed, the lead interrogator still called in for the last survivor, Isabel Cho, to get her account of the incident. It is revealed that Cho was having an affair with Stross for several months during the O'Bannon's voyage, and that she had fallen in love with him. Although, she noticed a change in him after he began to study the Marker shard they brought back from Aegis VII. After seducting Stross into engaging in intercourse with her in his lab, they have an argument about the condition of his mental state and he tells her to leave. After checking up on Kuttner, she and several other doctors arrive at the morgue. They find the bodies gone and several doctors killed. One of the bodies turns into a Necromorph, causing the group to flee. She releases Kuttner who kills the Necromorph. She goes to Stross' living quarters, and sees he killed his wife and son. They eventually meet up with Captain Campbell, who is fighting back the Necromorph infection with help from the O'Bannon security team. The Necromorphs overwhelm the last of the security, and the Captain, Kuttner, Cho and Stross flee into the vents. They make it to Stross' lab, where they meet with Borges and two crew members from the bridge. Stross explains that destroying the shard could stop the Necromorphs. Borges says that throwing it into the ShockPoint Drive could not only destroy it, but restart the drive. With weapons made by Borges, they head to engineering. One of the two crew members remarks about how Stross's ramblings align with Unitologist beliefs about Convergence before she is killed by what appears to be a Grabber. As they make their way towards Engineering, planetary debris causes a hull breach, damaging the outer door control for Engineering. The other crew member is sucked into space after a Necromorph latches onto him before Kuttner could save him. Captain Campbell sacrifices himself to seal the door manually, and goes out with a bang as he sets off a grenade while Necromorphs overrun him. The four survivors battle the remaining Necromorphs to get to the drive. When Stross refuses to throw the shard into the drive, Cho punches him and throws the shard herself. The drive starts and the destruction of the Marker shard deactivates the Necromorphs, killing the creatures.
After giving her account, Cho is informed that the USM Abraxis has reached the Sprawl. Cho surmises that her superiors are aware of the effects of the Marker and are using those exposed as human guinea pigs. The Overseer accompanies Cho to the Sprawl and has the Lead Interrogator along with his assistant killed behind closed doors. The Overseer offers Cho a position as head of the project, but Cho refuses after seeing what her superiors have done. She is strapped to a bed where an automatic drill comes into the camera, which presumably lobotomizes her, as she is seen in later footage with a touch of blood in the center of her forehead and a vacant expression on her face.
The Overseer and Foster Edgars watch a news report where Cho is framed as the terrorist responsible for the USG Ishimura, Aegis VII colony and USG O'Bannon incidents. They also discuss studying Stross and a crazed man they found stranded on a shuttle weeks prior, Isaac Clarke.
Necromorphs[]
There are several Necromorph forms, some of which are unique to the film, as well as Necromorph-like hallucinations (which resemble Pukers, the Pack, Fodders, Lurkers, etc).
- The Corruption
- Slasher (created by Stross, causing the O'Bannon outbreak)
- Lurkers (those of which seen in the film seem to be created from adult hosts as opposed to infant ones, oddly enough)
- A Brute
- A Necromorph that resembles a Grabber
- A Necromorph that resembles a Feeder
- Tentacles (possibly from the Corruption or another Necromorph)
Cast and Characters[]
- Christopher Judge as Nickolas Kuttner
- Ricardo Chavira as Alejandro Borges
- Gwendoline Yeo as Dr. Isabel Cho
- Curt Cornelius as Dr. Nolan Stross
- Graham McTavish as Capt. Caleb Campbell
- Peter Woodward as Lead Interrogator
- Kari Wahlgren as Rin/Sandra Burns
- Yorgo Constantine as Commander Sergenko
- Christine Lakin as First Officer Leslie Pallas
- Jesse Head as Noah Pawling
- Sunil Malhotra as Omar Nayim
- H. Richard Greene as The Overseer
- Maggie Disa as Vivian Kuttner
- Charlotte Cornwell as Interrogator #2
- Erin Fitzgerald as Alexis Stross
- Mark Engelhardt as Lt. Marcus/Marine #4
- Eric Visbit as Marine Colonel
- Mark Wilson as Marine #1
- Travis Clark as Marine #2/Sprawl Control
- David Wilcox as Marine #3/Ensign Voigt
- Kim Mai Guest as Lana
- Rick Cramer as Dr. Foster Edgars
- Clarissa Jacobson as Bridge Officer
- Lynanne Zager as Computer Voice/Reporter
Trivia[]
- The movie uses two different animation styles: 3D cel-shaded animation and traditional hand-drawn animation as in Dead Space: Downfall. Like the Dante's Inferno animated film (also made by EA and Visceral Games), several different styles of cell shaded animation are used, giving a different look to each flashback.
- In the scene where the crew is sitting in the shuttle about to drop down to Aegis VII to install the gravity stabilizers, Engineer Noah Pawling is seen playing the PlayStation Portable version of Dante's Inferno, referred to by Rin as a "Hologame". Later in Alejandro Borges' re-telling of the events on Aegis VII, Pawling can be seen playing the game again. Noah mentions the Dante's Inferno movie, stating it was better than the game.
- In Dead Space: Salvage, the captain of the USM Victory briefly mentions the USG O'Bannon (if not by name) and its mission parameters: "We've dispatched a team to Aegis VII. The disaster almost ripped the core in half, so they're attempting to stabilize while searching for Marker evidence".
- Like Dead Space: Downfall, the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star plays at the end of the movie.
- There is an inconsistency with ranking of the Abraxis Marines. Colonel, mentioned by the radio operator, has 4 brow plate stripes on the helmet in the first scene and only two in the next. It is also strange that a colonel leads a fireteam instead of a sergeant.
- In Dr. Stross' perspective as he is speaking with the captain of the USG O'Bannon about the Red Marker shard, the captain can be seen drinking Kirkwalls Scotch Whiskey. This could be a reference to another game published by EA, Dragon Age II.
- The cover of Aftermath is a reference to "Cross my heart and hope to die, Stick a needle in your eye." This is what Nicole says to Isaac when he crawls into the machine with the needle in Dead Space 2. The needle draws out the Marker codes, which is why the Marker is in the place of the needle.
- The name "USG O'Bannon" is most likely a tribute to the late screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, of "Alien" (1979) fame.
- The ending scene of the film shows several cryostasis modules, presumably with all the survivors that have come in direct contact with the Marker and are being sent to the Sprawl. While two are labeled "Clarke, Isaac" and "Stross, Nolan", others have the names "JaeWook, Park" and "Darron, Norris". The former corresponds to the visual effects supervisor of the film while the latter is of an unknown person.
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