DWF 2015: THE AFTERMATH

Sonny (Sam Trammell) in The Aftermath.

Love is the drug

By John Esther

Once a successful man living in a nice Louisiana home with "more things than most people," Sonny (Sam Trammell) now lives in squalor. He drives a jalopy. His hotel is a dump. He uses shaving cream for masturbatory lubrication and he probably has not bathed in weeks.

Rather than try or care and pull himself out of his predicament, Sonny tokes, smokes, snorts and freebases himself to his heart's discontent. For reasons slowly forthcoming, he seems to have a death wish a la Ben Sanderson (Nicholas Cage) in Leaving Las Vegas.

While everyday is probably the same as the next, Sonny's monotony finds purpose when he decides he must return a pendent to his presumably estranged wife, Jennifer (Missy Yager). Unfortunately, Sonny's plans go awry after he calls an escort service.

Now Sonny must retrieve the necklace from a seedy gang of people lead by Franki (Vanessa Ferlito). That will not be easy. These are not nice people and Sonny habitually remains intoxicated.

Directed by Tim McCann -- whose previous gritty films include Nowhere Man and White Rabbit -- this story about self/drug abuse would be nowhere as remarkable were it not for Trammell's performance and McCann and Chris Kursel's editing choices.

Trammell (True Blood), who is in every scene, puts his blood sweat and tears into the role, balancing mania and pathos in the appropriate doses.

And, thanks to the editing, as well as the script, the ambiguous finale is surely an asset. Sonny's stark, stank, dark and dirty reality may be more of a drug-induced nightmare than a man actually trying to come to grips with a tragic reality.

Hardly the kind of film you will ever see at the cineplex (other than the Chinese 6 Theatres for Dances With Films), this why we like small, independent film festivals.


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