After.Life (2009) [Blu-ray]
Drama | Mystery | Thriller

After a horrific car accident, Anna (Christina Ricci) wakes up to find the local funeral director, Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) preparing her body for her funeral. Confused, terrified and feeling still very much alive, Anna doesn't believe she's dead, despite the funeral director's reassurances that she is merely in transition to the afterlife. Eliot convinces her he has the ability to communicate with the dead and is the only one who can help her. Trapped inside the funeral home, with nobody to turn to except, Anna is forced to face her deepest fears and accept her own death. But Anna's grief-stricken boyfriend Paul (Justin Long) still can't shake the nagging suspicion that Eliot isn't what he appears to be. As the funeral nears, Paul gets closer to unlocking the disturbing truth, but it could be too late; Anna may have already begun to cross over to the other side.

User Comment: mags_04 from United States, 9 November 2009 • What does it mean to be alive? Not a question you're going to find broached in 10,000 B.C. or 2012. But it is a question first time director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo tackles in After.Life with surprising depth and skill. Christina Ricci plays Anna, a woman disconnected from her almost fiancé (Justin Long) and alienated by her mother, who moves about her days in a mostly apathetic haze. For the most part Anna's life seems, well, rather lifeless - until she wakes up on mortician Liam Neeson's slab only to learn that she is in fact dead. What exactly that means is the mystery.

My favorite way to see a movie is when I know next to nothing about it (so I won't spoil anything here!), and that's how I went into the AFI screening of After.Life last night. I knew the basic premise and a little about the story, but other than that - nada. Which I have to say is a great way to approach a thriller. The highlight for me was Liam Neeson (no real surprise there) who brings surprising warmth and complexity to what could have otherwise easily been a very two-dimensional character. The other standout was Chandler Canterbury as Jack, Anna's young student who has a little figuring out of his own to do. Their performances alone are worth the price of admission. The director's attention to detail, dream imagery, and color (most notably a scene where Neeson washes the dye from Ricci's hair as she lies stretched across an embalming table) reminded me of the stark, Gothic beauty of Six Feet Under and Dexter. That said, this film isn't cut and dry, doesn't tie everything up neatly at the end, and asks more questions than it answers. It's definitely not your typical American movie - something I consider a positive aspect. If you don't, then I'd suggest skipping this one an netflixing Twister.

Summary: Thoughtful and Creepy.

User Comment: *** This review may contain spoilers *** furtherintime from United Kingdom, 12 August 2010 • Ah, here we see yet another self-assuming, clunky mess of a film. We should have known, having seen the pretentious dot that has been placed between the two words of the title for no apparent reason.

The opening is somewhat promising, involving a bored and depressed Christina Ricci, who gets involved in a budget-effective car crash and wakes up in a funeral parlour with the grim Liam Neeson looming over her, explaining that she is in fact, dead. That he tells her her blood flow has stopped before promptly injecting her with drugs (a rather pointless endeavour for someone with no circulation) denies the essence of her film-long confusion. But that doesn't seem to bother anyone at this point, because we like to give movies the benefit of the doubt, don't we. Unfortunately, Ricci's sole demonstrable skill in the film appears to be going from squeaky desperation to grim, monotonous acceptance and back again in a matter of minutes. This simply serves to add more confusion to the already bizarre plot, and ultimately makes us unsympathetic during the final scenes.

The problem with the film is that it has no idea what it is. The director has clearly been hoping for a cut above the average horror flick, but there is not enough originality or wisdom to transform it into anything else. The result is a cheap and excessively melodramatic B-side horror, which lacks the spooky scares that make its tawdry counterparts so much more exciting. The fact that the film takes itself so very seriously throughout makes it all the more infuriating.

One of the film's very few silver linings is Liam Neeson's understated performance as the unhinged funeral director, convincingly dishing out a mix of soothing sobriety and chilling psychosis, and managing to drag some life out of the clumsy and repetitive script. But then, you'd expect that from a man so undeniably bad-ass that he's even played an actual lion in a film.

A diluted and overlong episode of The Twilight Zone, for horror completists and fans of Ricci's feminine form only.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW

I find the ending worth a mention. Downer endings are all well and good in the right context. When the film's content is strong, and there is method and moral to the disappointment, one can still come away from it feeling rewarded, or at least provoked into contemplation.

Unfortunately, none of this is applicable to After.Life. The film's plot relies on the prospect of a recovery and reconciliation between its two leads; the character development is too thin and plot points too few and far between to allow for anything else. So, after having sat through an hour and a half of dreary nothingness, we as a now solidly popcorn-eating audience expect the alleviation of some form of resolve, to reward us for enduring the rest of the film and to tick one final box in the series of clichés that it has been following so avidly throughout. But unfortunately, the film seems to think that a negative finale is a one-way ticket to critical acclaim. And once upon a time, it was, but now this is simply not enough. And so, we are left with an uninspired and underwhelming descent into rigor mortis, with the bad guy living to strike again, and again, and again. God forbid.

Summary: A confused, clumsy piece of pretentious melodrama.

[CSW] -2- Other than getting to see al lot more of Christina Ricci's body than I ever thought I see, the plot has gaping holes in it and I was only able to suspend my disbelief by giving the recently dead surprising new abilities. After watching the extras where the director explained her point of view, the whole plot evaporated completely. I only gave it a -2- because it was well acted but I completely disliked what the plot was supposed to be and there is no way that the movie supports that ridiculous plot.
[V4.0-A3.5] MPEG-4 AVC

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