The odd thing about after.life is that there are a lot of things in the film that either don’t go anywhere or simply aren’t required, and an equal number of things that are totally illogical and out of place.
Paul (Justin Long) and Anna (Christina Ricci) are a couple in limbo, it appears that Anna is not totally sold on the concept of them remaining together, much to Paul’s distress. Anna is a teacher and one afternoon she attends the funeral of her piano teacher, for some reason she decides just beforehand to have her brown hair dyed bright red, just the thing to do before funerals apparently.
After the funeral she meets Paul at a restaurant for a fancy dinner, Paul proudly informs her of his new promotion and explains that it involves a move to another city, he is obviously half way through telling Anna that he wants her to go with him when she ridiculously jumps to ludicrous conclusions that Paul is dumping her, over-reacts and refuses to listen to him and then storms out swearing. Look Paul, I find Christina Ricci and her massive forehead on a lolllypop stick body beguilingly and inexplicably hot, but the bitch is obviously psycho, let her go mate.
The massive death wound.
Only he doesn’t get the chance to kick her narrow ass to the kerb, as she drives off in the rain, sobbing and texting, she is in a massive car accident and is killed. We can tell it was a massive car accident because she has a 4 cm cut on her gigantic forehead which is patched up in seconds. (Ridiculous but more palatable once she takes her gear off.)
Now Liam Neeson is Eliot Deacon, the local undertaker, as he preps Anna’s corpse it is evident that she displays little of the “rigor” normally associated with the “mortis”, Anna can talk, in fact she hardly shuts up. She tells Deacon, frequently, that “I am not dead”. Far from ignoring her Deacon talks back, as we see later on he talks to all the corpses in his morgue (must be fun at parties), in this regard Deacon is sort of like a Dr Doolittle for the dead…
Eliot Deacon: “Jackpot!”
Deacon is a perfectionist with his subjects, ensuring that they are as presentable as possible at their final public showing by prepping them in painstaking detail. This is a good thing, as I like my hot nude corpses pristine and pasty.
Initially Anna can’t move even though she has speech and is aware of her surroundings, later though up she gets and walks around the place, only Deacon runs a tight ship and she and the other more stereotypical corpses are locked into the morgue.
Meanwhile back in town, two things happen, Paul discovers that Anna is dead and learns that her Mum refused to tell him as she (again inexplicably) blames him for her death, Anna’s Mum appears in only a few scenes, but it is evident that she is a total bitch. Paul is not happy, especially when Deacon refuses to let him see Anna’s corpse as he is not “family”, the cops also ignore his demands for intervention on the grounds that he is obviously stricken with grief and isn’t thinking straight.
The second development is that a former student of Anna’s, 11 year old Jack, starts lurking around the funeral home, chatting to Deacon and generally acting like a creepy kid. He tells Paul that not only is Anna in the place, but he saw her walking around…
So on and so forth, for the remainder of the film Anna walks around, tries to escape at times and starts to wonder if she is actually dead or not, Paul on the other hand is confident that she ain’t for some reason, even though he has scant proof but the words of a small boy. Jack is used to pad some time I think and give Deacon someone to talk to and confide in, and Deacon himself simply stays stoic and dispassionate.
There are a couple of what you might call minor twists near the end, some nudity but as always for “art’s sake”, (means not sexy, unless corpses are your bag!), and everyone in the film seriously looks like they are on the fence about the credibility of the picture. It’s as if they aren’t sure that the film is any good so they seem to only try intermittently.
And I agree, after.life is the ultimate “So what?” film, there are a lot of ingredients that should add up to something OK, only the whole thing is so, well, bland.
I mean if you read this on the DVD cover:
- Death
- Nudity
- Gore
- Sex
… you might be forgiven for thinking that the film might be OK. In this case OK would be very generous, after.life (stupid title too) has all the elements for an OK film after.all, but when you see the finished product perhaps you too will be saying “So What?”.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. Too many pointless subplots and ridiculous plot elements to take the film seriously, even if you ignore those many flaws the rest isn’t much good either.
(And as for Christina whipping out the little Ricci’s… It’s appreciated but I’d rather you did it when you were alive.)
