 Sophie and her father Kalem spend a wild summer together and by wild I mean boring is all heck in 2022's Aftersun. It's an A24 joint! Aftersun is rated R for swearing. Side effects may include drowsiness, inability to make it through an hour and 42 minute film in one sitting, and of course me questioning why I offer a mythril level membership on Patreon for people to recommend movies for me to review and then give them a shout out. That was a lot, I know. And so was this movie. I want to give a special shout out to Joseph Riello for recommending Aftersun. It's a movie. I watched it. I can't say I liked it. I also can't say I hated it. Because I will often watch a movie like this, questioning my own existence on this planet, questioning why this film was ever made to begin with, but then letting it sit for a while. Now I will 100% say this is artsy fartsy nonsense. I will 100% be confident that most people, a majority of people on this planet earth, will not like this movie in the slightest. My wife would rather jump off the top of our roof than have to sit through Aftersun. It is a movie that's an hour and 42 minutes long, but it feels like five hours. It is intentionally slow. There are parts of this, it's a 24, keep in mind. There are parts of this movie where the camera will sit, lock, stock, and barrel on a dude sleeping on a cot for 45 seconds straight. No blinking. No interruption. Just Truman Show-esque found footage of a guy sleeping. Remember this scene in Unbreakable where M. Night Shyamalan shoots a TV set and you see the reflection of the people talking? You better believe Aftersun does that, but they take it even longer. I don't know if that's true. That scene in Unbreakable is very long. I think it's rivaled here though, and this one adds even more. There's artsy shots all over the place. Now I'm not discrediting this movie entirely. I do appreciate the way it structured the story, how it is very much a found footage meets piecing together of sorts of thoughts and memories of this girl Sophie. Sophie, we will later come to discover, is an adult looking back on this one summer with her dad, who as a girl looked at her old man in one light, but now as an adult pieces things together and sees, oh yeah, there probably was more going on here. There's probably a reason he stumbled back into this low-rent resort at 3am naked and drunk off his ass. He probably had some skeletons in his closet, some demons he was fighting with, but he was still a great father then. Still trying to make it a magical summer vacation, away from the ex-wife, away from his troubles. Troubles followed him. Sophie looks back on this time, teary-eyed, emotional, thinking about what could have been and holds on to those memories for dear life because they are all she has left. Now it is a vague film. I don't even think they tell you what happens to the dad at the end of the movie, if I recall. Sophie is an 11 year old girl here. She's starting to see the world for the first time when she's on this vacation. When her dad goes to get drinks, she notices the teen couple making out in the corner. She's waking up a bit. Now these are the scenes that are not done through the lens of a mini-DV camera. These are her piecing things together as an adult looking back. She's filling in the blanks in between the found footage. That stuff's cool. It's clever. I like it. It's just that the movie doesn't have much story there. At least not on the surface. We like Sophie get to piece things together if we want. If we want to go on this journey. This movie is probably better upon a second viewing. I don't think I have it in me because as it stands, I'm just not that interested in Sophie's story with her dad. That's the big problem. It's kind of like Cloverfield, which I eat up, but instead of a giant kaiju destroying buildings, it's just a dad getting drunk some nights. That's it. That's it. What keeps you on the hook throughout this movie is the great performance by Frankie Carillo who plays Sophie. She is one of the most believable kid actors I've ever seen. Full stop. And that's pretty much full stop as far as the acting goes. It's really only her and the dad who do have a great rapport, but everyone else is just background noise. Occasional extras are here and there. For the most part though, it is just these two. It's their story. Take it or leave it. The music's very melancholy outside of the horrible performances by the resort staff and the visuals when their mini-DV are obviously atrocious and the camera work by the father. Just a nightmare. He's all over. It's like this thing was strapped to a bird and they just were beating the thing repeatedly. But when it's more of that piece together style more traditional, it looks good. I can see this being an emotional tear-jerker for some. For me, it didn't really hit that way. I was more just fascinated with the filming style and how this movie was still going. At an hour 42, it felt very long with the pace. But I'm still glad I experienced it. I appreciate all the recommendations the patrons give. Good, bad, and otherwise. And so again, I say thank you very much Joseph for recommending this movie. I appreciate you very much and thank you in the comments for watching. Like the video if you had a good time and please make sure to subscribe if you somehow stumbled upon this After Sun review and thought, wow, this was a great job. This was really well done. I would love it. I would love if you joined me here. All right, we'll see you next time.