"Maybe it Explains Everything:" Three More Mysteries Explored in Chris Carter's The After (2014)

Chris Carter’s The After -- which I reviewed here -- is a dramatic science fiction puzzle informed by several scintillating mysteries. The pilot episode brilliantly raises questions, and sends viewers down a dark path with a handful of bread-crumbs to interpret and consider.

I noted some of those bread crumbs with my last post on the subject, here. 

But today, I want to gaze at three additional aspects, clues or mysteries of the Chris Carter pilot. 

I should also note, I have readers of the blog -- Adam Chamberlain, JWickliffe, and MFL -- to thank for bringing these concepts and images to my attention.

The next three mysteries or clues to consider are:

The Grey

The After opens with a montage of dozens of briefly-seen images in quick-cut succession.

We learn quickly that these images -- of family life, of being trampled in a crowd, and of nightmare monsters -- belong to the subconscious of the lead character, Gigi (Louise Monot). She awakes from the bad dream, and leaves the night terror behind. She forgets it.

This dream, however, is clearly prophetic. Everything that happens to her in the course of the hour is foretold in this vision.

Gigi sees images of the Dark Shadow (the fearsome demon creature featured in the finale), and also of the city street where panic takes over later that day, when Gigi nearly is crushed in a flood of panicking citizens.

But as reader MFL pointed out, this sequence also features another image of tremendous significance: an extreme close-up of a Grey alien. 

This alien’s face appears in the dream imagery, and seems to be staring directly at us -- the audience -- as well as at Gigi. Is it reading her mind?

Since the appearance of this alien precedes the onset of the disaster in The After, we can ask ourselves another question too: has it caused this disaster?

Is it observing Gigi?

Has she seen the future, or do her dreams of the future -- manifested by the Grey -- actually create it?

Greys are commonly associated with alien abduction, and so we might also wonder whether Gigi is an abductee herself, and if she has suppressed the memory of her experience. Or perhaps she simply has not yet had time and opportunity to reveal it to the others (and the audience).

Once the Grey is recognized -- and thanks again to MFL for noting it -- we arrive at the notion that The After features a book-end kind of structure. 

There is a “supernatural” or super-real organism seen at the beginning of the hour, and again at the end of the hour.  The episode starts with an alien, and ends with a demon.

I believe this idea could relate to….

The Book of Revelation

When Tammy brings up the Book of Revelation in The After pilot, she notes that “Maybe” it “explains everything.”  There’s every chance that we are hearing not only Tammy’s words here, but Chris Carter’s as well.  The Book of Revelation could be the key to unlocking this text.

Specifically, Tammy mentions “The serpent” and “the prostitute” as Adam Chamberlain reminded me in his comment.  

Some background: in the Book of Revelation, the author -- John -- experiences a vision.  He witnesses “the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters.  With her the kings of earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of the adulterer.”

On the prostitute’s head is branded the words “Babylon the Great, Mother of Prostitutes and The Abomination of the Earth.”

In broad terms, however, the Book of Revelation is simply a prophecy, and I noted above that Gigi experiences a dream -- a prophecy -- in the episode’s opening moments. 

 So what is it that she bearing witness to?

The appearance of two unlike beings -- a Grey and the Dark Shadow -- suggests that Gigi may be, in fact, witnessing what John witnessed in Book of Revelations: a War in Heaven.  

The two sides, in this case, may be represented by a “mighty angel fallen from Heaven” (the “Grey?”) and a demon (“Dark Shadow.”)  

Or if Carter is playing on audience preconceived notions and expectations, the roles may be, perhaps, reversed.

But the book-end appearances of the Grey and the Dark Shadow in the pilot represent a different kind of allusion to Book of Revelation as well.  There, an angel-like character is seen and he says, quoting the Lord; “I am the Alpha and Omega,” “the beginning and the end.”

Here, the Grey is the Alpha and the Dark Shadow is the Omega, literally the beginning and the end of the pilot episode.

There exists another connection between The After and the Book of Revelation. In John’s vision, the number seven recurs again and again.  

There are seven stars (representing seven angels), seven candlesticks (representing seven churches). There are seven strikes of thunder, as well.

And in The After, all the characters trapped together were born on March…the seventh.  

Similarly, there are eight survivors or main characters in The After. But reader JWickliffe put forward the tantalizing theory that one of them may not be a survivor or human at all, but a person or being watching the others, seeing what they do.

If this is the case, there are seven main characters, not eight, and we may, therefore, have our seven "angels" to fight in the War in Heaven.

Finally, Tammy asks in The After about the serpent and the prostitute.  

Who are they, in real life terms? What real life objects, people, or organizations do they represent?

Who is the prostitute that sits by many waters?”  That seduces kings? Whose wine intoxicates us?

This could be a metaphor for, among other things: wealth. The love of money causes kings to betray their people, and distracts people from the things that our important, like human connections. 

Or, perhaps the great prostitute is a metaphor for self-image: narcissism.

This latter possibility seems more likely to me, because so much about The After is concerned with modern technology: with iPhones, for instance. 

Does love of self -- transmitted and multiplied through modern technology -- betray us?

The “Sound”or "Noise"

At one point in The After -- at approximately the 33 minute point -- Gigi is outside in Los Angeles, and a weird sound, like a ricochet, is heard.  

The images cut to a car window's glass shattering.  

We have no idea what this sound is, and we never get an explanation for it. 

JWickliffe called my attention to it, so I went back and watched again.

And yep, it’s there. So what is this sound?

If we go back to the Book of Revelation, John's vision describes an inhuman “loud voice,” which sounds as “when a lion roareth.”

Could this be what we witness during this scene? The sounds of Heaven’s war raging.

We shall see...

As I wrote last time, I continue to be impressed that The After -- just an hour of drama thus far -- intimates so many mysteries, and so many possibilities.  

This fact makes me all the more excited for the possibility of a continuing series.  I hope we hear some good news from Amazon soon...

Chris Carter's The After: Exploring Four Mysteries in the Pilot

I hope by now everyone has had the opportunity to watch the extraordinary pilot episode of Chris Carter’s The After (2014), available for free streaming at Amazon.com.

I wrote a review of the episode here, but today I want to discuss in detail some of the mysteries the drama establishes.

So if you haven’t watched the pilot yet, and you plan to do this, this post will spoil your sense of discovery. 

Stop reading!!

Go watch the program and then come back after an hour or so, and read this, okay?

Now, for everyone else, I want to elaborate on some of the series’ mysteries as they appear in the pilot. If and when the pilot goes to series, then we’ll have other aspects of the central mystery to discuss, no doubt, and some of the implications discussed below may also be moot.  As we learn more, some theories will gain traction, and others will become inoperative.

Mystery One: Missing Time

About mid-way through the pilot episode, Gigi (Louise Monot) seeks assistance from a harried and distracted policeman in the city proper, and he informs her that communications have been down for a day. 

This comment does not seem consistent with Gigi’s time-line as we experience it, suggesting that, somehow, time has been altered for her and the other individuals in the parking garage. 

Later in the program, if memory serves, Gigi repeats this information to the others as if she can’t understand why the policeman said it. The implication, I believe, is that they share her perception of time. The group of eight has been through something different, therefore, than the rest of the world.

We know that Chris Carter is familiar with the concept of “missing time.” 

It featured, for example, in The X-Files pilot in 1993. Basically, it is a phenomenon in which alien abductees “lose” time because their memories have been tampered with. They have been abducted, forgot the abduction (or rather, had the memories of the abduction erased….) and when they return to Earth, feel like they are missing a piece of their lives. Clocks and other time-pieces also reveal a discrepancy.

In The After, we might assume that the survivors we meet in the parking garage and elevator have been singled out by the strange phenomenon -- whatever it is -- and they have similarly seen their reality altered. They remember time differently than the rest of the world remembers it, or at the very least differently than the police officer Gigi encounters, who has been “out” in the world dealing with the crisis.

So when did this group of eight lose time?  When trapped in the elevator? When in the parking deck?

And why were they singled-out, targeted, and abducted, if that is indeed what occurred?

Mystery Two: March 7^th

We learn in The After  -- after all eight people in Gigi's group gather in Francis’s (Sharon Lawrence’s) house -- that every individual there share one birthday in common: March 7. 

This could mean a couple of things, if we delve into the mystery.

The first possibility is one that a friend of mine in California e-mailed me about, and is based on a similar revelation from the movie Identity (2000). 

To wit: what if in The After, we are not dealing with eight separate people in a group, but actually one person with multiple personalities and a splintered sense of reality?  All the personalities -- essentially being just one person -- thus share a birth date.

The second possibility is that these survivors are part of a laboratory experiment of some unknown (alien?) sort. They have all been selected to be trapped together (and perhaps experience missing time..) because of their birth-date. 

They are the March 7^th experiment group, in other words.

This would mean that the Dark Shadows group people not in terms of actual date of birth -- because the characters are clearly different ages -- but by astrological sign, perhaps.

The third possibility is very similar to the preceding speculation. The survivors in The After who gather in the house share a birth date because they have all ended up in Hell, purgatory, or some alternate spiritual dimension. 

In other words, this is the Hell of People Born on March 7^th.  

If the Dark Shadow is a demon, he has been assigned to monitor them, and their actions. 

He has even been “branded” with their specific tattoos (like the 888, or the snake eating its tail) because he must keep track of them, and perhaps (with those red eyes…) he sees them differently than humans see each other.  His vision is different, in other words.  

So he keeps track of them, observes them, or perhaps even hunts them based on these identifying markings…which he also keeps on his body as a handy reference to his prey.

Mystery 3: The Dark Shadow

This intensely creepy being revealed in The After's denouement may either be an alien or a demon, but he certainly seems to be watching the survivors of the apocalyptic “event” very closely. Humanoid (meaning biped....) in shape, the creature seems to be able to re-shape himself at least to some degree. His bones and muscles re-form, and he skitters away in a kind of spider walk. 

The very term “spider-walk” might remind some horror genre fans explicitly of The Exorcist (1973), and the cut-scene involving a possessed Regan (Linda Blair) spider-walking down a staircase. 

This footage was unearthed more than a decade ago, and is seen in outtakes and some cuts of the film. The Exorcist reference or allusion may therefore suggest something important about the Dark Shadow’s nature.  

He could be a demon, like the creature in the Friedkin film. 

I should hasten to add, Chris Carter is an extremely knowledgeable person in terms of cinema and horror history, and his work often includes homage, tribute, and allusion. So we shouldn't take the manner of the creature's gait too lightly. It could be a clue.

I believe, at this juncture, that the Dark Shadow is an observer (at least at first), though he attempts physical contact with Gigi. The fact that he makes this effort suggests that he may not be afraid of being “seen” by his quarry.

Mystery 4: The Tattoos.

One character in The After – Tammy (Arielle Kebbel) -- has a tattoo: “888.”  

That number represents Jesus “the redeemer” in Christian numerology circles. By contrast, the Devil is 666.

In Chinese numerology, 888 is a number that represents good fortune. But given what we know of Tammy (that she is from the Bible Belt, and talks specifically about the Book of Revelation…), we must assume that her 888 tattoo is Christian in origin, meaning, and importance.

What other meanings could 888 have?  Well, the year 888 AD was a leap year, though I’m not certain why that would be important (except, after a sense, it could be termed a year with “missing time.”)

Finally, the tattoo has three eights, and as has already been established in these speculations, there are also eight survivors in The After, working together. So the 888 may have some secret significance, like the March 7^th birthdate.

The Ouroboros tat -- the tail-swallowing-snake -- by contrast represents a repeating cycle. 

It also represents a “primordial energy” or unity that cannot be extinguished. The man who wears it, McCormick (Andrew Howard) could therefore be a former member of the Millennium Group (!), or a member of some other organization we don’t know about.  

Or, he might simply find the Ouroboros personally meaningful to him. 

However, if we put the 888 together with the Ouroboros, we get the idea of Christ the Redeemer and a Cycle that Repeats. Does this mean that The After reckons with Judgment Day, the Second Coming of Christ, and Armageddon, his battle with Dark Forces (represented by the Dark Shadows)?

We shall see, I hope.

Anyone else have any thoughts about these or any other mysteries on The After?  I’d love to read your thoughts and get a discussion going here about all of them.

I have noted before how much The After impressed me, and part of the reason why involves these (and other mysteries…), which seem highly symbolic, and related to Scripture. 

Carter's work is universally symbolic, which grants it layers, and makes it eminently worthy of a re-watch. 

 It looks like The After resurrects that same magic alchemy...

Chris Carter Interview at The X-Files Lexicon

One of my favorite haunts of late has been The X-Files Lexicon. The site and writer Matt Allair recently posted a new interview with Chris Carter, whose pilot, The After is my current obsession.  

Here's a snippet from the interview:

Matt: The X-Files and Millennium thematically had a dialog between science and religion; will The After be a continuation of that dialog, or do you see it going in a completely different direction?

Chris: No, I think for me, those were the two big questions in life (chuckle) and so they inform everything, even if they don’t inform it directly. So I’m sure you’ll see those questions come up, but hopefully in as entertaining a way as possible.

Orodromeus: Selling The X-Files to FOX famously involved bringing forth statistics about alien abductions in the USA. What did it take to sell The After?

Chris: Really the script just sort of sold itself. I got it out there, Amazon saw it and liked it, which is pretty much all of the sales pitch I had. I met with Joe Lewis from Amazon once and we had a nice conversation, but beyond that I think the script sold itself.

Click on over and read the whole interview, but it's a great piece, and one that adds to our better understanding of the pilot.  

Also, while you're there, check out a great post on my other obsession, Space:1999 called "Pilgrims through the Void." 

TV Wise and Troy L. Foreman: Interview with Chris Carter about The After (2014)

I was out-of-town this weekend (in Richmond...) but consequently I missed, until just now, Troy Foreman's terrific interview with Chris Carter at TVWise.  

Carter's new series pilot, The After, is fast becoming a consuming obsession for me (and a lot of other fans too...), and Troy's interview gets in a lot of good and tantalizing questions/answers about what we know so far as viewers, and what Carter can tell us at this early juncture about the story and its deeper meaning.  

So click on over and read the full interview.

Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

"TVWise: Your work has shifted from anticipating the end, to bringing on the end right now. How is that a different place to “live” as a writer?

Chris Carter: I’m not calling this the end. I’m just calling this a mysterious event. I am shying away from words like apocalyptic or dystopian. This is something that is unexplained right now.

TVWise: The After features a lot of footage of modern conveniences (like iPhones, and the like), but it doesn’t really help the characters. Is the show a commentary on modern technology, or how humans deal with technology?

Chris Carter: Yes. I think that will certainly feature in the series if we get there and it’s something of a comment right now."

Cult-TV Review: Chris Carter's The After (2014)

In the 1990s, writer/producer Chris Carter had his fingers on the pulse of the modern science fiction and horror genres -- and of the national Zeitgeist itself -- when he created The X-Files (1993 – 2013).

That classic series dealt not only with the then-hot topic of alien abduction, but also with the more grounded issues of conspiracy, domestic terrorism, and the new-found place of genetic science (and DNA) in the law-enforcement/forensic process.

Carter’s second dramatic series, Millennium (1996 – 1999) was similarly trail-blazing. The Lance Henriksen series cast a critical eye on, among other things, affluent American suburbia at the turn of the century, and the secrets roiling beneath the gated, but otherwise seemingly placid surface.  What was found there? Apathy, insanity, religious zealotry and facile delusions about “home security,” to name a few.

Having watched and admired Carter’s TV programs for many years now, I often describe the feeling underlying both The X-Files and Millennium as anticipatory anxiety. 

At the time the programs aired on network television, the economy was booming, the middle class was thriving, and America was building, per President Bill Clinton, a “bridge” to the 21^st century.

And yet, despite these undeniably positive augurs, both Carter series expressed a kind of swelling uneasiness about how things were going, the inescapable feeling that a storm was approaching, and that, furthermore, the signs of that storm were all around us…if only we had the insight to recognize them.  . 

Today, Carter’s latest production, the pilot for a series called The After, is available for your review at Amazon.com, and it’s plain once more that this artist’s greatest gift -- beyond his penchant for crisp, revealing De Palma-esque camera moves -- is his capacity to step back and cannily observe the prevailing winds impacting the culture. 

Then, after noting these things, Carter reflects these qualities back at us in a science fiction or horror milieu.  Essentially, he is a modern day Serling or Roddenberry, an artist who uses what many still consider “fringe” interests (like horror and sci-fi) to reveal aspects of human nature.

Coming now, long after the “storm” that overcame America last decade with the War on Terror, the appropriately-named The After is the book-end artistic work to The X-Files and Millennium.

It is a meditation not about an oncoming apocalypse, but, instead, its arrival. With the anticipatory anxiety background of The X-Files and Millennium perhaps in mind, The After suggests that the “storm’s” arrival was never a matter of “if,” only of “when.”

In other words, today is doomsday.

The world has changed tremendously since the 1990s, and there’s a lot more noise today, for one thing.

It’s noise from the net, social networks, iPhones and tablets, and other technological advances. There’s also a lot more partisan noise, rancor between and among Americans who view the world very, very differently. 

On first blush, and after just one episode, The After seems to concern the ways that modern American life erects barriers that block cooperation and trust.

Again and again throughout the pilot story, technology acts as a barrier that slows down the (crucial) learning process during the onset of the crisis.

In brilliant, frightening and wholly unexpected fashion, The After also reveals the first chapter of a mystery about the force that may be behind this worldwide apocalypse.  The nature of that force is uncertain.  It could be spiritual, alien, or hallucinatory, but from the first chapter alone, we know it is terrifying.

“Something terrible is happening.”

The After follows Gigi Genereau (Louise Monot), an aspiring actress, as she auditions in Los Angeles for a role in an upcoming film.  She doesn’t get the role, and doesn’t want the role that is eventually offered to her.  She returns to her hotel feeling defeated, and plans to return home to her husband and daughter in New York.

But then things start to go wrong. 

Along with a police woman, a clown (Jamie Kennedy), and a few others, Gigi becomes trapped inside the hotel elevator when the power unexpectedly goes down.  She manages to escape with the others, only to end up locked in the hotel garage with a lawyer (Adrian Pasdar), and an escaped convict, Deed (Aldis Hodge).

Another escape is managed, and once outside Gigi learns that the whole world is undergoing some kind of catastrophic crisis.

This unspecified crisis has already overwhelmed government and local authorities. With phones and the Internet down, Gigi and the group of diverse survivors, attempt to find safe haven at a nearby mansion. 

But dangers lurk outside, both from roving gangs, and from a “dark shadow” in the woods.

It’s not a matter of if, but when…”

I wrote above a little about the subtext underlying this pilot episode. Many times throughout the fifty-five minute production, technology acts as a barrier, trapping and snarling groups of survivors.  The elevator breaks down. The hotel parking garage is sealed. The phones and Internet are down. Water faucets aren’t working.  Food is spoiling in the refrigerator, from lack of power.

This is the total collapse of our entire modern infrastructure, and it vexes the characters because they have become totally dependent on modern conveniences, and on the safety (apparently) afforded by law enforcement, government, social media, and so forth.  But the world has changed instantly, and for the most part, the characters can’t cope.

The pilot episode does an especially good job of expressing the idea of technology acting as a barrier, from frequent close-ups of Gigi’s phone, to imagery of characters trapped behind gates, or half-opened elevator doors.  These shots visually symbolize the shock and panic associated with a catastrophic meltdown of Order.  One spectacular and feature film quality shot featured in the pilot episode pulls back from Gigi to reveal thousands of people milling up, aimless and afraid, in a city square.  The pull-back just keeps going, as the breadth of the chaos becomes apparent.

The characters in the drama are a diverse group, a group that reflects 21^st century America. There are people of color, people of alternate sexual orientation, wealthy people, a “foreigner” and people from different regions (such as the Deep South) represented in the mix. All are viewed here by the other characters – at least initially – in terms of stereotypes. 

In other words, what these characters know of their fellow countrymen seems to originate, largely from media stories about them. Again, the underlying notion is that in modern America, our sense of community is fractured or even imperiled by the technological barriers we erect; from the screens we perpetually gaze at.  We don’t even know who are neighbors are, or what they are about.

What happens when those tablet or iPhone screens go dark, permanently?

When we face each other -- really face each other for the first time in a long while -- what do we see?  How do we understand one other?

The After begins to explore this notion, and I’d like to see a series that follows up on the premise.

Since Carter is of the early initiators of long-form or serialized television arcs (along with JMS and a few others), it is intriguing to note the bread crumbs that The After drops in its pilot.

I don’t want to reveal them, for fear of ruining the surprise. But some mysteries concern, broadly-speaking, the reasons why these particular individuals should end up together, the idea of missing time (a policeman indicates that the apocalypse started a day ago, but this isn’t reflected in Gigi’s experience…), and the appearance of…well, something.

Along the way towards developing the enigma, we also get canny references to The Book of Revelation, and creepy high-angle shots that suggest the group of survivors is under the microscope of an all-seeing, malevolent eye.  An earlier moment seems to presage this realization, as one character observes a helpless bee in a swimming pool, and sympathizes with its plight.  We are no different, she suggests.

At this point, as I noted in my introduction, the dark force haunting The After could be alien, or religious, or simply supernatural.  One thing is for certain, however: the shape that the force takes – or at least “reflects” back at the characters -- is a nice little shout-out to Millennium.  But clearly, if The After goes to series, I’m going to have to indulge in some refresher studies on Scripture and study of religious iconography.

How all these pieces fit together is something I’d very much like to explore, and so I hope The After goes to series. The pilot is easily one of the best I’ve seen in years, since Lost in 2004, or Veronica Mars the same year, actually.

If you want to explore the questions of The After, visit Amazon.com and give it a go. In closing, I will simply state this: the pilot episode made me feel tense and clutched for the first forty-five minutes or so, and then, during the climax, that anxiety was supplanted by shock, and then the stirrings of real fear.

The monsters are here.

Sneak Peek: Chris Carter's The After (2014)