Macabre...ish Horror Review: After. Life

 

 

 

After. Life, 2009/ 104 min.

 

 

After a car accident, Anna (Christina Ricci) wakes up on an exam table in a funeral parlor. The same she visited during an earlier funeral, same parlor, same director, Eliot (Liam Neeson), she met at the funeral. As he’s cutting off her clothes, he informs her that she died and tells her, he has a gift and can communicate with the dead.

 

 

Her boyfriend, Paul (Justin Long), shows up to view her body but is rebuffed because he is not family. And Anna attempts to escape, she simply can’t believe she’s dead. Eliot continues to convince her that she has indeed died. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, does not and returns again and again, to rescue her.

 

 

During the preparation for the funeral, she asks to see herself in the mirror, one last time and breath fogs it up.

 

 

The funeral proceeds and Paul slides the engagement ring on her finger and later gets drunk, he cannot shake the feeling that she’s still alive. In his final attempt to confirm for himself at the cemetery. He hears scratching...

 

 

 

Flash to Eliot at his table with his tools and one of Anna’s students, Jack, who becomes fascinated with her death. They have something in common and Eliot has something to teach him. He watches as Eliot is preparing a person for burial, protesting, that he’s still alive.

 

Camera pans to what the truth is. Or does it?

 

This movie bothered me so much when I first saw it. Liam Neeson plays this eerie character a little too well. There is nudity and some graphic moments, as well as eerie ones but this is not a scary movie. This is a psychological horror. Have your palate cleanser ready after this one is over.