I think that all those die-hard fans of Chris Carter's previous productions (except "X-Files: I want to believe" which was a total disaster, a piece of unwatchable schlock) who enjoyed all his nicely plotted, well-thought, intelligent and rather suggestive TV series will be quite disappointed this time! (And I know that they are already: as I've roamed through different web forums and read how people are displeased & appalled by this new hmm... endeavour.)There is NOTHING in this miserable & drab pilot to attract any attention whatsoever: no likable characters, no intelligent or even interesting dialogues, no humour, no real thrill, nothing remotely thought-provoking or even simply eye-catching... In brief: NOTHING. All seems quite standard and insipid with commonplace turns of today bleak TV police dramas, cliché'd & quite sapless, crude throughout...

Loved it. The show picked up momentum to an intriguing story line. By the end, I was hooked on the characters and the hints at the unknown event that preceded "the after." It looks like Chris Carter has created a post apocalyptic show that uses realistic possibilities and mysterious coincidences, (like the X- files?) where the audience can enjoy speculating about clues and significances to find answers. If so, even better! Some of the characters are a bit more believable than others--and some are great. Would like to learn about their back stories. The horn got to be a bit annoying and it might have been nice to have music to pick up the pace at the beginning but after they got out of the garage, the action compensated. The concept is compelling. Looking forward to the series!

It felt like I was watching something filmed in the 70's ... kind of cheesy, but I must admit it had its elements of humor. Kind of cultishy.I couldn't take my eyes away. The usually group of humans stuck together ... the hot head, the macho w/the big heart, the snob, the mom, the old crazy lady... except the writers do seem to do good with the characters by showing their various sides in just one pilot.I love the old lady who was so annoying at first, but funny.Then all of a sudden at the end of the episode another element comes into play. And that was ... no spoiler here ... but I will say it was the ultimate wtf.It you like bizarre, dark comedy (though I'm not sure the comedy is always intentional or not) and like the crazy irritating group of humans trapped together who are all from different backgrounds type stories, you may like this.It moved fast and kept my attention.I don't think the story takes itself too seriously, which make it fun in the horror/thriller/sci-fi/weird/cult classic genre.

The After is a lacklustre knock off of LOST with nowhere near the level of suspense or character development. It tries to go for the strange-factor in so many ways but comes off as if writer/creator Chris Carter (best known for the X-Files) simply saved up a bunch of weird ideas and decided to throw them together without tying a single one of them sensibly to a plot. As such, the concept comes off as if he's firing in all directions and not even sure what he's firing at.The first 15 minutes of the show are ridiculously boring. I have a hard time believing that nobody read the pilot script and after 10 pages didn't ask, "Is something going to happen?" Nothing on screen adds to the characters any way other than artificially and what little incidences that do occur are not enough to drive interest. For a show that clearly wants to be suspenseful, there is in fact no suspense.That being said, one does get the feeling somebody along the way realized this fact as the first 30 seconds is just a montage of weird images edited in such a way as to jar the audience at the start. But it comes off as completely contrived. And then the show goes downhill from there. It's just puzzling that the producers didn't take that as a hint in reading the first script.The most disappointing element is that most of the characters are either clichés or lame attempts at originality. The fish out of water protagonist who just wants to see her family, the wrongfully accused black man, the insecure female cop, the rogue hick, the wealthy old lady, the slick talking lawyer and his supermodel girlfriend, and... a clown? You cannot make this nonsense up.As for the meat of the script, the dialogue is boring and the plot turns are glacial at best, all leading up to a cliffhanger. Or at least attempting to lead up to a cliffhanger. The big conceptual reveal in the end only starts to develop 10 to 15 minutes before the credits. There's no real hint of it throughout the show which makes it seem as if either the ending concept was tacked on or everything before it was just throw together because Carter knew a 15 minute show wouldn't fly.But that isn't even my biggest complaint. Anybody who had a problem with the notorious underwear scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness is going to be rolling their eyes with this pilot. Carter has taken the cake on gratuitous and unnecessary use of a woman as eye candy. It's really sad and in fact quite hypocritical considering the protagonist (who is an actor) in the start of the show gets her nose bent out of shape at a script read-thru that depicts a woman as a sex toy. It's like Carter was making a statement against such sexism in film and television only to employ it ten times worse himself.It is disheartening that Chris Carter after all this time can't come up with another decent concept. The X-Files and Millennium were way ahead of their time in their initial run. Harsh Realm was a laudable attempt. But ever since -- whether it be the Lone Gunmen or the second X- Files film -- Carter seems to have given up on perfecting his work before putting it out there. The After is nothing more than another misguided attempt that should have been either work-shopped further or rejected.I honestly have to wonder who at Amazon green-lit this series. As a writer who has read other original series concepts, it blows my mind that drivel like this gets a go-ahead while other, more original and interesting series ideas are left gathering dust.