Eli Roth in AFTERSHOCK (Radius-TWC)

In Aftershock, Hostel mastermind Eli Roth has come up with a special formula, finding a way to marry the cruelty and misanthropy of his torture porn franchise with the action of a made-for-TV earthquake flick. This is not exactly a swipe. Roth, who produced and co-wrote the film, has actually turned out a tight, very mean-spirited little horror movie in disaster drag. Whatever the film’s weaknesses or general greasy loathsomeness, Roth and friends are by now pretty good at setting up situations where you take basically likable people and do horrible, horrible things to them.

Blending horror and disaster actually makes sense since the genres share a dilemma. They both have to balance the ratio of normal life they show us—and to get us to care about the characters—with how much we see after the catastrophe, which is what we really came for, when the monster or meteor strikes.  Aftershock, despite its title, surprisingly tips the scales to pre-catastrophe, devoting maybe half of its brisk running time to an easy-going travelogue.

Gringo (played by Roth), a divorced dad, tours Chile with two local friends, Ariel (Ariel Levy) and Pollo (Nicolás Martínez), and they meet up with a trio of pretty young women (Natasha Yarovenko, Lorenza Izzo, and Andrea Osvárt). This approach risks boredom, including a scene with teen singer Selena Gomez, perhaps making an attempt to appear in every potentially offensive movie this spring. But I actually rather liked the disarmingly casual beginning, and Roth and his co-writers sneak in some snappy lines, such as when Gringo corrects the misconception that South America is all City of God and favelas, and praising Chile for being the “indie station” of Latin America. But Roth still tries his best to sink his own movie. Even playing what appears to be a slightly more nebbishy version of himself, he is an awkward screen presence.

Nonetheless, we have enough momentum that when the earthquake hits, as the characters are partying at a nightclub in Valparaiso, we care enough to watch them try to survive, first from the falling masonry and then the general breakdown in social order. It’s also strong enough to mostly overcome the limitations of the budget, which treats us to lots of hilariously cheap, shaky camera work and computer effects.

Aftershock is not subtle, but it has subtle touches. The characters, pre-earthquake, are obsessed with their iPhones and gadgets. At a party, the guys even flip their hands when rejecting girls as though scrolling through pictures on a touch pad. When the quake hits, they mostly lose cell reception, which does figure into the plot as far as it goes, but director Nicolás López and Roth show restraint, choosing not to beat you over the head with what appears to be their idea that modern young people are too dependent on technology.

That’s probably because once the earth starts a-trembling, they instead beat their characters over the head. And set them on fire. And shoot them. And sever their limbs. And stick glass shards through their kidneys. And flatten their heads with Mack trucks.

A movie like this appeals to a very specific person, and possibly the only fair way to judge it is to think like that viewer. The deaths are inventively cruel and disturbing, and the order in which the characters fall is largely unpredictable. The amount of build-up and backstory lavished on someone confers no special powers to get him/her to the credits, which, as in The Walking Dead, helps keep you on your toes.

True, you might leave the theater with a bad taste in your mouth, not so much from the gore, although there’s plenty of that, but from the deep, often misogynistic tone that animates everything. One woman is gang-raped. It’s partly off-screen with the brutality left to our imaginations (no thank you), which is almost worse—it suggests that even the filmmakers know they have gone too far. And though some of the victims die in ways related to their foibles, the film reserves an especially nasty twist for a woman who had an abortion. I don’t think liberals should be offended, though, as I would never attribute a pro-life agenda to what could more easily be explained by a simple desire to poke the viewer in the eye.