DVD Reviews

After.Life – DVD Review

By Jeff Swindoll Aug 13, 2010, 14:27 GMT

Young couple Paul (Justin Long) and Anna (Christina Ricci) are toying with the prospect of marriage when they have a chance encounter with Eliot (Liam Neeson), a mysterious undertaker who claims he can speak with the dead. When Anna becomes caught in the otherworldly realm between life and death, she risks being buried alive. Will Eliot help her, or is he being driven by darker motivations? ~ Jason Buchanan, All ...more

I guess I had some hopes for some life after death in the film, but I ended up taking the dirt nap after all.

It has a good cast and a storyline with possibilities, but the tale flatlines when predictability embalms it all.

Anna (Christina Ricci) and Paul’s (Justin Long) relationship doesn’t seem to be going well. Anna seems distant and Paul is frustrated by this. Paul is a lawyer and gets a job offer to go to Chicago. His plan is to propose to Anna, who is a schoolteacher, at their dinner at a fancy restaurant.

Anna misinterprets his discussion about this potential new job as his cue to breakup with her (not that marriage has success written all over it since they don’t seem to be getting along in the first place). Before he can clarify and pop the question, they fight, she tells him to go to hell, storms out of the restaurant, and speeds away. Anna’s emotions don’t help her driving and she has a car accident.

When she awakens she’s on the slab at a funeral home. She’s told by funeral home director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) that she’s dead and that only he can communicate with her because of his “gift” but he will make sure that she’s given a proper sendoff. A confused Anna has to figure out of she really is dead or if Deacon is a maniac with devious plans of his own.

Meanwhile, the grieving Paul starts to think that maybe Anna isn’t dead after all and begins a frenzied quest to decide if she is a prisoner or if grief has driven him insane.

After.Life appears to have a lot going for it, well besides an oddly placed period. It’s well cast and has a universal horror aspect since we all have a future appointment with the funeral home and would rather not think about it.

We also have a question as to what happens after that final curtain of life has fallen. What the film offers is not a solution to that mystery but it poses a mystery of its own in regards to the fate of Anna. You have two roads that the film could lead you down.

I’ll try not to spoil it for you, but just when you think that you know where it’s going the films tries to make you think that its actually the other road, but then it leads you back to the road you were originally on.

I found that initial road a bit predictable, was a bit more interested in road number two, was hoping that it was going that way, but in the end found myself back on Predictability Lane.

In the end, this didn’t do much for me. I did find the film well made and offered some interested, but in the end I was a tad disappointed to have taken for the ride that the plot kept me on. The cast is really good, but also a bit predictable.

Neeson makes a good mortician and horror actor, but you think maybe a film about death probably shouldn’t have been his first choice after the sudden death of his wife Natasha Richardson.

Ricci is becoming more and more like Wednesday Addams and even spends the second half of the film in the buff (since she’s dead you might think yourself wrong for having such necrophilic thoughts).

Long runs around and cries a lot, but you always hope that he’ll bring his investigation to a good end.

After.Life is presented in widescreen (2.40:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a commentary from director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, the 8 minute “Delving into After.Life” which is an interview with the same, the 2 minute theatrical trailer, and previews of other Anchor Bay releases.

I thought I knew where the film was going, found myself interestingly detoured, but eventually discovered I was right the first time. Therefore I wasn’t exactly surprised by what was supposed to be a twistier ending.

Maybe a more subtle approach would’ve worked out better. I found it a valiant first effort with a great cast, but in the end I liked half of it and was disappointed with the other half.