After.Life

Sometimes while looking at movies to rent, I will glance at one and think to my self "ya lets give this a try". Typically these are movies that look promising, even though I’ve never heard of them. Honestly a red flag should have gone off when I saw Christina Ricci, Justin Long, and Liam Neeson on the cover of a film I've never heard of. Typically I am easily able to spot the movies that sucked, but the got green lit when the studio figured they could throw a few stars in it there and turn a profit. And that's exactly what 'After.Life' is. However I figured this film had a strong enough premise that it would be worth giving a shot.

'After.Life' plays with one of the most mysterious questions a person can have, that is what happens when we die... When Anna (Ricci) wakes up on a slab in the morgue, she is told that she died in a car wreck. The funeral director Deacon (Neeson) claims to have the gift of being able to talk to the dead. However Both Anna and her boyfriend Paul (Long) are having trouble accepting that she is dead. Anna and Paul both believe that Deacon is lying, but the funeral director continues to claim that Anna is dead and he is simply trying to help. The whole movie is spent trying to figure out, is Anna really dead? Or dose Deacon secretly have malicious intent?

The question of is Deacon lying became the only thing that kept me remotely interested in this movie. It was frustrating just how inactive the characters are. I asked myself, if Deacon has done this so many times, why he wouldn’t have a better way of convincing the dead of their demise. And the relationship between Anna and Paul is very unconvincing. Paul is supposedly a hotshot lawyer, yet can never find the right words to say. He finds himself stumped as to his legal rights to see his dead girlfriend. Over all, Long's acting just failed. Ricci dose a decent job over selling everything. Being on the fence about wanting to love or wanting to live doesn’t make sense towards the end when we discover more about how she thinks. But all the revelations about Anna's past are just a failed attmept to add some depth. Neeson does a great job, doing nothing new. He’s playing the same character he’s done in ‘Taken’ and ‘Batman’ and even the Narnia films, just this time he is a creepy Funeral director.

'After.Life' is listed as a Mystery/Thriller. But really the characters are so inactive, and so borring its hard to get any thrills. As for mystery, the film does do a great job making the audience question whether or not Anna is dead, or if Deacon is bat shit crazy. But if you are interested in finding out for your self, my recommendation is to look up the ending on the internet. Watching this film is just to frustration to sit through.