Afterburn

The Museum of the End of the World

There is a specific kind of melancholy inherent in the post-apocalyptic genre—not the survivalist grit of finding food or the kinetic violence of defending it, but the quiet tragedy of what we choose to remember. In J.J. Perry’s *Afterburn*, the end of the world has arrived not with a whimper, but with a solar flare that stripped the Eastern Hemisphere of its technology and its order. Yet, the film isn't concerned with the future of humanity so much as its past. It posits a fascinating, if unevenly explored, question: when the lights go out forever, does art still matter?



Dave Bautista plays Jake, a treasure hunter for hire in a radiated Europe that looks less like a wasteland and more like a graveyard of the Renaissance. He isn't scavenging for medicine or fuel, but for the Mona Lisa. Perry, a director whose background in stunt coordination (notably on *John Wick*) usually promises a ballet of violence, here attempts something stranger: a heist movie played out in the ruins of civilization. The visual language of the film is its strongest asset. Filmed largely in Slovakia, the backdrops of crumbling brutalist architecture and overgrown European streets create a suffocating sense of reality. The world feels lived-in, tired, and aggressively analog. It is a texture you can almost touch—rust, dust, and the heavy silence of a world where the digital hum has been silenced.

However, the film’s narrative ambition often buckles under the weight of its own premise. Adapted from the Red 5 Comics graphic novel, *Afterburn* struggles to balance its pulp roots with the gravitas of its setting. We watch Jake and Drea (Olga Kurylenko) navigate a landscape populated by mutants and warlords, but the script often treats these threats as video game obstacles rather than genuine horrors. The human core—the relationship between a man who wants to escape the world and a woman fighting to save it—flickers but never quite ignites. Bautista, an actor of immense soulful capability (as seen in *Blade Runner 2049*), is given moments of introspection that are too quickly cut short by the next requisite explosion.



There is a pivotal sequence involving a train—a classic Western trope transposed onto a nuclear winter—that encapsulates the film’s friction. It is technically proficient, showcasing Perry’s gift for kinetic geography, yet it feels emotionally hollow. We are watching figures move through space, rather than characters moving through their own desperate arcs. The villain, played with scene-chewing delight by Kristofer Hivju, serves as a reminder of the barbarism that always waits in the wings, but he feels like a remnant of a different, sillier movie.



Ultimately, *Afterburn* is a film about the value of symbols. Why die for a painting when you can’t feed yourself? The film suggests that without these totems of our shared history, we are already dead. It is a noble sentiment, imperfectly delivered. While it may not ascend to the pantheon of great science fiction, it remains an interesting artifact in itself—a rugged, flawed meditation on the things we carry with us when the fire comes. It is not a masterpiece, but in its best moments, it reminds us that even in the ashes, we are still looking for something beautiful to look at.