After.Life
Posted by admin | Posted in Movies | Posted on 16-08-2010
5
Product Description
After car accident, woman “wakes” up in funeral home.Amazon.com
Quite a few folks in the movies have seen dead people, especially since The Sixth Sense, but After.Life gives this by-now-familiar conceit an intriguing spin. As director-cowriter Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s 2009 film would have it, the deceased aren’t exactly dead. At least not yet; in the days between whatever killed them and the moment they’re put in a box and lowered six feet under, they’… More >>
It took me quite some time to get started in writing this review. You see, “After.Life” is a film unlike anything I have seen in a while. This doesn’t mean, in any way, that the movie in bad – on the contrary, this is an unconventional picture that defies categorization: it can be a drama or it can be a mild horror film. At any rate, “After.Life” is smart and engaging, an unforgettable experience.
Christina Ricci stars as Anna Taylor, a young school teacher who is apparently engaged to Paul Coleman (Justin Long), a successful lawyer. Early in the movie, we watch her attending the funeral of a former piano teacher. It is there that we meet Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson), funeral director of the cemetery in which the burial was taking place. She later joins Paul for dinner, and he informs her about some news that made her angry. After some loud arguing, she leaves the restaurant in a rush, and takes off by herself. Predictably, she had an accident and, as a result, she dies. Next thing, she wakes up at the funeral home in which Eliot is about to prepare her body for viewing. She has scars as a result from the accident that killed her. She argues with Eliot that she is still alive, and he informs her that she suffered massive internal trauma due to the car accident, which caused her death. He also tells her that he has the capacity to hear and talk to the dead – he “helps the dead to make the transition.” He claims that he hears their complaints all the time, and that hers is not new. She insists that she is still alive, and Eliot tries to convince her otherwise. The story slowly develops under this premise, and the director (Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo) provides clues throughout the movie about whether or not Anna is indeed alive.
“After.Life” is dark, as expected, yet it has a beautiful, colorful production design and photography. Christina Ricci has to be commended for the choices she makes in films – she spends half the film with no clothes on and stills delivers like the best under those presumably uncomfortable conditions. Neeson, on the other hand, also portrays his character with restraint, given the fact that his wife in real life recently died, and he has to make a film about death. The DVD includes a making-of documentary, commentary by the director, and more. (USA, 2009, color, 103 min plus additional materials).
Exclusively reviewed by Eric Gonzales on July 31, 2010 for [...]
Rating: 5 / 5
After.Life has such a great cast but great cast doesn’t always = great movie. I have nothing negative to say about the actors they all did their part. However, what can you say about a movie that honestly just isn’t good. This is a psychological thriller that does little to make you think or play on the mind. You can honestly predict what is going to happen and that’s never a good thing in psychological thriller. Your supposed to throw curves and keep the audience guessing and them blow them away with the conclusion. Nothing of the sort is to be seen here. The worse part of this mix in are awkward cheap spook you scenes. They don’t fit in with the story and don’t at all add in any relevant sense to the movie. With such a great cast I think the story should have been better. These actors were too good for this film. Without saying so much about the film (because there isn’t much to say without spoiling the shallow plot) the best thing to do is skip it or watch it when it comes on cable. There’s nothing note worthy about it and I honestly wish I spent my time watching something else. Bottom line great cast but horrible movie. The concept was good but could have and should have been written much much better.I’m actually very disappointed in this film I really wanted to enjoy this film but there wasn’t anything about it worth commenting on.
I honestly wish I spent my money on another movie more worthy of my time.
To sum the movie up in one qoute..
“You’re dead…no I’m not dead… yes you are you’re dead…no I am not dead” X the length of this film.
Rating: 2 / 5
Let me start out by saying that I don’t like horror movies or any movie where the entertainment is derived from someone intentionally and repeatedly inflicting physical and/or mental pain on someone else. I do however enjoy a good suspenseful thriller that delivers some kind of spiritual message about life and death and was hoping that this movie would be such a film.
I knew nothing about this movie (had never even heard of it – that should have raised a flag right there) and picked it up on a whim, basing my decision soley on the strength of the cast and the potential of the story line. The cast definitely delivered (and they are why I gave this movie any stars at all), given the script with which they were working. Liam Neeson is excellent as the undertaker. He comes across as benevolent, caring, calming and classy. Justin Long delivers as the tormented by guilt, well-meaning boyfriend. And Christina Ricci is great as someone who has seemingly lost her ability to truly love and be loved.
Through the first half of the movie, I kept flip-flopping on my understanding of what was going on: Anna is dead, but is in denial and Eliot is really a Ghost Whisperer kind of a guy, trying to help her. Then something would happen to make me think that Eliot is a wacko, holding a very much alive Anna against her will. Then I’d go back to my original thinking.
By the end of the movie it becomes apparent (at least to me) that Eliot is indeed a wacko. I just don’t get WHY he does what he does: causes accidents with his white van (which apparently no one ever witnesses at the accidents), gets to the victim first, drugs them to make them appear that they’re dead, receives them at his funeral home so he can mess with their minds, and then buries them alive!?!
The GOOD: Acting, setting and cinematography.
The BAD: Implausible plot, wasted potential plot developments, gratuitous nudity (although if I looked as good as Christina Ricci, I may want to show it off too), continuity issues – Anna’s hair kept changing from red to brunette, and weird flashback/dream sequences that didn’t enhance the story. Here’s an example of the wasted plot development: I thought that the little boy, Jack, might actually be a ghost as I’m sure I saw his picture on the wall next to Mrs. Whitehall and his mother didn’t come to pick him up at school. Jack’s mother didn’t react to him when he was speaking to her, but she reacted to the sound of the door slamming when he left. But apparently Jack wasn’t a ghost, so why the ghost-like set up? Just more confusion in an already confusing movie.
I was really hoping that this would be one of those movies that has an ending that ties everything together and you say to yourself, “Man, that was incredible – how did I miss that?” Think “Sixth Sense”. But no – sadly this movie just left me with a very unpleasant, flat feeling. There was almost a glimmer of hope for this movie when it seems like Paul and Anna reunite in the afterlife at the end. But that was quickly shattered by the last scene. What exactly was the point to this movie? I wish now that I hadn’t rented and watched it.
Rating: 2 / 5
AFTER.LIFE (yes, that is a dot between the two words suggesting this may be a video game…or blog, or something created in cyberspace) takes a long shot; can a one-line story keep an audience’s attention for over 103 minutes? Not having noticed whether this played in theaters or is one of the direct to DVD films, that question is tough to answer. The director and writer Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo (writing in tandem with Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk) asks us to suspend belief and muse about the idea that there is a time between ‘death’ and the actual burial (or other means of final interment/disposal) when the spirit may struggle with the idea of life ending. It is an interesting hiatus to study and fortunately a cast was selected to portray the characters involved in this internet-like game that makes it watchable.
Schoolteacher Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) and Paul Coleman (Justin Long) are in a rocky relationship: they could be headed toward marriage but Anna has trust issues that prevent her from committing to same. In a rage she leaves the frustrated Coleman, subsequently is killed in a car accident, and is taken to a mortuary where mortician Elliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) begins preparing her body for the funeral. Anna is unable to move anything but her mouth and denies that she is dead, a situation Deacon encounters with most every dead body he prepares for burial. And this is where the conundrum begins: is Anna dead or is she alive, kept prisoner by Deacon? Anna’s hateful mother (Celia Watson) visits her daughter’s corpse and has few kind words to say. Paul is devastated, comforted by his colleague Tom (Josh Charles), that Anna is dead and visits the mortuary to see the body but is refused admittance by Deacon. One of Anna’s young students Jack (Chandler Canterbury) seems to have a special affinity for the dead and spies on the mortuary where he sees Anna standing in a window. Anna and Deacon have long talks about the after.life – that time when the soul is preparing to leave the corporal body – and Deacon continues to prepare Anna for her funeral. As she is buried the facts of the story straighten out a bit, but to reveal those facts would ruin what little suspense there is in this film.
Though the moody atmosphere is well captured by both the director of photography Anastas N. Michos and the musical score by Paul Haslinger, and the presence of Liam Neeson who plays his role very straight and Christina Ricci who plays her role almost entirely in the nude, give the story the requisite creepy effect. Yes, it is corny in many ways, but at least it is a bit different from the formula movies that keep churning out of Hollywood. Grady Harp, August 10
Rating: 4 / 5
Life can get interestingly hard. Especially when you die. Imagine, if you will, having a relationship you love. Then imagine seeing it fall apart right before you eyes as you find out that you are going to be left behind for a better job opprotunity. That means that you will be a failure like your mother told you, stuck in the life you always dispised, alone.
And then it happens – you collide with a vehicle and find you are dead and can only sort this out with one person, the man making you perfect for the funeral you never wanted to attend.
In After.Life., everything was laid out wonderfully and the movie kept a question coming back to you. Why is it that this man can see the dead when everyone else cannot? He doesn’t really know the answer, saying only that it is a gift he had, but these people are dead – aren’t they? They show all the signs of death, look dead to everyone else, and are either really easy to talk into something or are cold and corpsy.
Its a good thing to watch and nice, especially considering how much of it hinges on two people talking.
Had the two people been a different group, I might have disliked this movie. This was not the case, however, and I found that it seemed to know how to pull me in and keep its secrets until the end. And even the end – it is a cold movie with cold things to say, and that ending is especially unkind.
Personally, I loved it and thought it was a great find considering it was just a movie I found with no real fanfare at all.
Rating: 5 / 5