User Reviews

Imagine if Fear the Walking Dead featured mostly likable and intelligent Muscovites instead of relentlessly annoying, half-wit Angelenos. That may give you some idea of what The Day After (Vyzhit Posle) is like.

Also, The Day After's infinitely better scripts are performed by more charismatic actors. Unfortunately, those scripts are translated by a person or people who lack an understanding of idiomatic English. This is a typical example of the ridiculous subtitles: "He was a good variant" (instead of "He was a nice change," I think).

Another weakness is that the last episode is pretty far-fetched (though still enjoyable) as the writers contrive to bring all the characters together for a big showdown.

In general, though, I found this a suspenseful and engaging series, and I'm looking forward to the next season.

Great acting from every single character. Literally every single one and that hardly ever happens! Extras and even those not still alive persons did an awesome job!! The biggest asshole has turned into my favorite and I would be really upset if any of them leave the show!! I thought... yea this would be a really great American show. but I do not know any other actors doing these characters would be as good. I so wish I knew Russian, so I could watch without captions. So much loves because the camera work is also really good and the level of suspense as well the sight lines achieved are just spectacular! Seriously, if you do not mind captions this show a crazy adrenaline ride!

Saw this is passing on Prime so decided to watch it. I've binge watched the first season and only started the first episode of season 2 but will likely finish it and season 3. Considering I have a dozen other series to binge watch, the fact this caught my attention enough to steal me from other shows is why I give it good marks even with a silly plot.

OVERALL. Overall Mood worked well for me. The main protagonists wake up not knowing each other or how they got there. All the stereotypes are there from the fat kid to the nerd to the appearance obsessed rich girl (although she's not rich).

Being a Russian series then I did not recognize any of the actors and the exterior scenes were all new to me. One of the reason I like watching European series is that everything from road signs to buildings to parks all clearly have a different feel from North American counterparts.

The feel of the movie especially the infected females with their jerking walk, screams, odd running and pack mentality had a strong, if not logical , scare impact.

PACING. The pacing varied with some episodes flowing nicely while others were slow. A few had edit issues in which there was a jump in continuity that while sequential, was not explained. The best example is when the group is locked the second time in the bunker and two of the main characters come back to open the door. One point the two are in the city, the next they are back in the shelter. Another is when a character stops another from doing a motorcycle jump and the next, they show up at a important carjacking. The paramilitary find the hidden lab with the poorest explanation. This is likely just poor writing than pacing. They let go but they didn't originally know who they were capturing and he escapes minutes later. Ok to believe that one guard carries a tracking device on him and thinks to put it on the jacker. Not OK to believe that one guard carries two tracking devices, one to hide on the jacket and another to put obvious so it is found.

SCRIPT. Can't comment on the script as it is in Russian but like others said, the subtitles are very poor. There are time when you just have to conjecture what was said but fortunately those tended to be in scenes where the dialogue would have been routine and expected.

ACTING. Some have praised the acting but overall I thought it was only average at best. No one actor stood out as very good or bad so that was okay. One character, a practical joker always filming things, was not very good but that could be the writing and the directing.

PLOT PROBLEMS. Like a number of dystopian type tv shows and movies, there are some common errors here.

*No attempt to understand why they were picked as a random group. Yet we see several links. **Mitya and Irina are at the same rave. We know why Irina was picked up but why Mitya? Wrong place, wrong time? **We know why Marina was picked up. **We can assume that Natasha, who is commenting about sleeping with rich men, likely slept with the wrong rich man. **Skat was hacking into the drug companies systems. So if 5 of the 11 have links to Acme somehow, you'd think the other 6 might as well. A subplot not followed and could have provided an interesting episode putting it all together,

*Timeline. The timeline on the first season is not clear but as we continue to see people dead from that first day of the infection then it is not especially long. Yet we see people almost giving up during this short period. At the start of the second season, which must be months later as Valera has grown his hair out but we are seeing separate groups that almost look cultish. I'm afraid the second season might go down that road that we've seen in movies with a timeline over years with cult development but here it is just too short.

*Geography. Much of the above also relates to the fact that this is just an outbreak in Moscow - not even all of Russia. While people realize they are being contained, escape continues to be an option so knowing there is a whole normal world out there takes away some of the dystopian elements.

It could be argued why doesn't the government or official military take over the control of Moscow but this is fiction and the ACME company seems to have been given that power.

*Escaping. We see and hear of people getting shot while escaping. Yet we don't see any attempts to take out the electric fence, just a plot to jump it. There is a reference to shooting at the fence but no references about trying to drive a truck into a pylon or using something like a truck to ground out the fence or use of explosives.

*Female Zombies. I think it is unfair to call them zombies but people are. They do attack and in groups but just bite the neck and move on. As soon as you are dead - they move on. The biggest issue is that while the female zombies are scary in one way - they are not scary nor should they be overall. They are slow unless they are chasing you. They approach you slowly. They walk around slowly in the open in the daytime. They run but not especially fast. They don't appear to be any stronger than they were alive. They die with one gun shot. So any group of people with swords or clubs, let alone weapons, could hold their own against a group of them. And bizarre how frequently people pass over dead police or military without taking their weapons. The zombie scream is decapacitating and on that point, even after Max tells people you have to block your ears to avoid that, no one does. No one wears helmets like the woman on the motorcycle. Not even ACME's paramilitary don't have hearing protection.

*Dumb Activities. Like the worst of horror movies, the main characters do things that don't make sense. **They never change clothes especially those with inappropriate shoes. **When getting supplies, some load up carts with potato chips v.s. Canned products. (Also ignoring there is a long walk back to the car.) **Shouting or talking loudly at times when they shouldn't. Paramilitary often in pairs even when they could come against large numbers of zombies or armed human resistance. **The aforementioned lack of picking up weapons or for that matter - anyone carrying a weapon. The main group has one of those magical pistols with unlimited ammunition, usually carried by Max, and Valera carried a pipe. Otherwise none of the rest carry weapons. **The city has some futuristic electric fencing keeping people in or out in places but in other locations, it as roadblock with sandbags and a handful of soldiers. Even the armed human group we saw "anteaters" would be armed well enough to overpower one of those outposts and escape.

*Finale of season one doesn't make sense. First Glotov would not have let them go. It would just start killing them one after the other and cutting off limbs of Irina until the father gave him. And if he did let them go then since he overheared the father say to his daughter to radio to say they are safe, the border patrol destroys the van and radios back they are on the other side. So the professor wants to hear his daughter's voice as he said earlier but that can't happen so if you were going to lie then that defeats the whole purpose of letting them go. And if they weren't going to let them cross the border then just drive them to an empty field and kill them. But in the end Glotov is given the vaccine, which we all know is not the vaccine, and it is instead a concentrated version of the virus which kills him within 1-2 minutes. Why is a concentrated version of this virus being stored in a syringe ready to inject? It would only have taken a few seconds of footage to show a syringe being loaded from a vial to make this more reasonable.

MORE? I will watch more but I don't especially like the directing of what I saw in the first episode of season two so I might not finish it if it remains like that.

I went to check the actors to see if I had seen them in anything else but hadn't. However I noticed that some characters have varying number of episodes under their belt including more than they showed up in before they died. Stas for example dies in episode 10 but it listed at being in 13 episodes. So curious to see if these are flashback episodes to come or someone just can't count.

I also see there is a short of the same name and premise with only two actors, one being a German/American actor. I can't find out more about that nor how it links to this series.

So while there are gapping plot holes, I was still enthralled with the series and stayed up until 3 am two nights in a row to finish season one. I rarely fastforwarded although there were some times I did when the scenes were very stereotypical like when Mitya and Natashia are in the penthouse suite or the-you-know-it-is-coming "conflict conversation between the daughter and the father about how his work drove them apart (and the wife/mother) but deep down he always really loved her" scene.

Here is my casual review of 'The Day After' as it is titled on Amazon Prime and IMDb.

In summary, it is a Russian television show about a group of people who find themselves trapped in a bunker with no memory of how they got there.

There is a larger story about Moscow being hit with a virus that mutates women in monsters.

So I'll avoid any more spoilers and just get to the meat of my thoughts.

*Acting*: The acting is pretty good. There is very much an 'anti- capitalist' theme here, and the villains chew the scenes there is no denying it. But the main cast is pretty solid. It's such a large ensemble that not everyone gets equal screen time, so hard to gauge the skill of every actor. I'm half way in and still don't buy the romance sub-plot between what I suppose are the shows main characters.

*Script*: Hard to say. The version on AP suffers from some of the worst translations I've ever seen. Not only that, but sometimes they get partially cut off (I'm watching these on a Roku Model 2 and cannot adjust screen size). So you really have to pay attention to what the actors are doing and the mood they are trying to convey.

They do this very well and I get the main thrust of the scenes, though I think maybe some plot points that were considered frivolous were changed in the port-over.

*FX*: Eh, this is the show's weakest element. The bunker is well done, but moving outside it begins to showcase the budgetary limitations.

Some of the props are obviously that. The "monsters" are... well they do jerk around in this distinctive way, sort of like on 'The Strain'. The blood I suppose looks 'real' enough. But 'The Walking Dead' this is not.

*Conclusion*: I'm enjoying this, but can't really recommend it outside the novelty factor. It just has too many things going against it unless you speak Russian.

If you are a die-hard post-apocalypse fan, you may want to check this out as it explores the typical themes from a slightly skewed cultural angle we Westerners are not exposed to everyday.

Die Hard Post Apocalypse Fans: 8/10 Everyone Else: 4/10

It was super annoying seeing them come out the bunker(twice) clean with make-up on. Not a single women put on shoes or clothes that they could run it. ALL of the characters make stupid choices. Why are all the zombies young women in heals that run funny? The Russians must zombie like that, because they made a movie with the exact same zombie women(Inn a mall I think).

Not a bad series if you can look past the abhorrent dubbing. I would sooner have subtitles than dubbing the voice actors all sounded like cartoon characters and couldn't take them seriously. All the zombies looked like they'd stepped out of a salon who only dealt in 60s styles. The way the zombie women moved we're almost chicken like so again was laughable and couldn't take them too serious but the scream and the creepy looks on their faces made up a little for the funky chicken walk. The storyline itself isn't too bad and managed to keep me entertained. Series 2 started with a lack of explanation of where certain characters were and who new ones were so lots of unanswered questions. Someone who was supposed to have died from a gunshot and was definitely dead is somehow now alive and under the evil corporation's roof. Will have to wait and see if it's worth continuing to watch after a couple more episodes.

This one works as a "zombie" disaster survival movie for seasons one and two. For season three, it becomes a scifi thriller that will have you watching the episodes back to back. Excellent acting all around, and a strong script, gives this series a vivid reality that Walking Dead never achieved. In third season, the character playing the mercenary should get an award for projecting a monstrous character who makes Hannibal Lector look like a teddy bear by comparison.

I give this show 9 out of 10 because of the depth of the script. The characters interact, pair up, part, and struggle to cope with the horror around them. Sure, the budget for the show wasn't very good, and it shows with the endless reuse of the same stock shots, but the writers and the director made the very best with what they had.

Interesting moral messages in this one as well. The refusal of the Murania Queen, Nadya, to abort, or otherwise permit her developing baby to be harmed, certainly sends the message that the developing baby is not just " a collection of cells". Real bravery on display here as well: the IT guy, Sasha, shows as much bravery in the face of horror as the alpha male/quasi "Rambo", Valera. The female characters are all strong in their own way in this one but are still women who are different than the males in the series; compare to the remake of Battlestar Galactica with the Starbuck character .

* The last few episodes of season three have graphic scenes of torture so be prepared with an empty stomach as needed*. Good news is that the torturer gets his in the end.

I started this a few months ago and figure it wasn't the right time for me to watch it because I didn't get through the first episode. Fast forward to just about a month ago and seriously, I couldn't get enough and had to force myself to turn it off some to get a decent night's rest. Yes, the subtitles are sketchy but for me, that's part of its charm. The sudden disappearence of Maksim and Ira after season one was jarring and the explanation wasn't satisfying but it didn't matter. Mitya and Nadya quickly emerged as my favorites and I loved to see them grow and mature. Could there be be a fourth season? I really hope so!