Dead Space: Aftermath is a 2011 American science fiction horror film directed by Mike Disa, written by a team including Brandon Auman, and developed by Film Roman and Pumpkin Studios under the supervision of Electronic Arts. It was released direct-to-video on January 25, the same day as the 2011 survival horror video game Dead Space 2, published by Electronic Arts.
The movie serves as a prequel to Dead Space 2. The story follows the interrogation of four survivors from the USG O'Bannon, who were sent to the remains of the planet Aegis VII to investigate the fate of its colony, discovering a fragment of an artifact called the Marker which triggers an outbreak of reanimated mutated corpses dubbed "Necromorphs".
Film Roman, which had previously collaborated on the production of Dead Space: Downfall, wanted to create a prequel with a narrative based on the Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon, showing the same event from multiple perspectives. To reflect the different narrative timelines, different animation styles were adopted, with Film Roman partnering with multiple South Korean animation studios to head each flashback sequence. Multiple staff members had previously worked on Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic. Reception of the film was mixed, with many criticizing its niche appeal and animation quality.
Plot[]
Aftermath is set in 2509, shortly after the events of Dead Space, and acts as a prequel to Dead Space 2. During the events of Dead Space, a planet mining colony funded by the Church of Unitology identified a Marker, an object sacred to the Unitologists' beliefs, on the planet Aegis VII. The Marker is a human copy of an alien object that has a fatal influence over the Aegis VII colony and the mining ship USG Ishimura, eventually causing an outbreak of reanimated mutated corpses referred to outside the movie as "Necromorphs". Aftermath follows the accounts to EarthGov officials of four survivors from the USG O'Bannon, which was sent to investigate Aegis VII. After contact is lost with the O'Bannon, EarthGov sends another ship to investigate and recovers four survivors; security officer Nicholas Kuttner, engineer Alejandro Borgas, chief science officer Nolan Stross, and chief medical officer Isabella Cho. En route to the EarthGov base at Titan Sprawl, each survivor gives their account, with EarthGov gathering intelligence for their own Marker project.
Kuttner led a team which included the other survivors to stabilise Aegis VII's failing gravity. There they found fragments of the Marker, which were worth a lot of money. However, touching a fragment caused Kuttner to have a psychotic episode, damaging the gravity stabiliser before he was restrained. After giving his account, Kuttner escapes and has another hallucination which leads him into space, where he dies. Borgas's story reveals that the team failed to fix the stabilizer, and abandoned Aegis VII as it disintegrated, bringing back both the Marker shard and salvaged corpses from the Ishimura. Aegis VII's destruction damaged the drive and killed several crew members. While he is unaffected by the Marker, Borgas knows too much and is executed after the interrogation. Stross reveals that he fell under the Marker's influence while studying its effects on corpses and unwittingly unleashed a Necromorph outbreak on the O'Bannon. When he went to protect his family, he suffered a hallucination which caused him to kill them instead. Stross is kept alive so EarthGov can study the Marker's impact on his mind.
Cho's account reveals that she freed Kuttner to help fight off the Necromorphs, and partnering with Stross and Borgas they decided to throw the Marker shard into the ship's drive, hoping to both destroy it and jump-start the ship. By the time they reached the drive room, they were the only surviving crew members. Despite Stross's unhinged attempt to stop her, Cho threw the Marker shard into the ship's drive, causing a shockwave which disintegrated the Necromorphs but left the ship stranded. Now having arrived at the Sprawl, Cho deduces EarthGov's intentions of recreating the Marker. When offered the chance to join them, she refuses, so is lobotomised and framed as a terrorist responsible for the fates of Aegis VII, the Ishimura, and the O'Bannon, while Stross is held in an EarthGov asylum alongside series protagonist Isaac Clarke.