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.
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.