After.Life

Plot synopsis:
After a horrific car accident, Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) preparing her body for her funeral. Confused, terrified, and feeling still very much alive, Anna doesn't believe she's dead, despite the funeral director's reassurances that she is merely in transition to the afterlife. Eliot convinces her he has the ability to communicate with the dead and is the only one who can help her. Trapped inside the funeral home, with nobody to turn to except Eliot, Anna is forced to face her deepest fears and accept her own death. But Anna's grief-stricken boyfriend Paul Coleman (Justin Long) still can't shake the nagging suspicion that Eliot isn't what he appears to be. As the funeral nears, Paul gets closer to unlocking the disturbing truth, but it could be too late; Anna may have already begun to cross over to the other side.However, her boyfriend Paul, who was about to propose to her in a restaurant date which went terribly wrong, as she thought he was leaving her for a promotion in Chicago, starts to have strange feelings that she is trying to communicate with him. He sits and the car wreck which now sits at the police impound. His friend who works at the police station. Anna's mother, Beatrice Taylor (Celia Weston), is a wheelchair-bound lady who, instead of feeling sorry for her daughter, just moans to her dead body about who is going to take care of her (the mother) now.Paul looks out of control. He tries to see Anna's corpse twice, and it's him who goes to pick up Anna's stuff from the school. There, Jack (Chandler Canterbury), a little boy who was bullied at school but was defended by Anna once against two boys (Jack Rovello & Sam Kressner) older than him, says that he saw Anna standing up wearing a red outfit. At the beginning, Paul punches him and is restrained by school staff, like a security guard and a teacher (Doan Ly). Jack arrives home and the only adult is an old lady (Rosemary Murphy) with white hair always in front of TV who may be also a dead person who Jack can see before having transitioned.Finally, two days pass by and Anna is prepared to be buried. She has been convinced by Eliot that she is dead and transitioning into the other world. She asks to look at herself for one last time, and he fetches a hand mirror. She breathes, and there is steam. That makes her realise that she is probably alive and is going to be buried alive. She tries to fight him off, but he injects onto her neck something which paralizes her. At the funeral, Paul and Jack feel that Anna has moved a little bit. Paul can't be sure until Eliot tells him that she is probably not alive anymore.Jack becomes Eliot's apprentice. Paul drives like crazy to save Anna. It's night, and he is driving on the other line at full speed. He has an accident but he is able to unbury Anna and save her. However, there is a blackout and he wakes up naked at the body, and Eliot and Jack are working in his body, preparing him for the funeral, all pretension of him being dead put aside.

Tags: plot twist, mystery

Review:
After Life explores the beliefs about the soul and what happens to it after we die.The film is about Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci), a school teacher who supposedly dies in a traffic accident.
It seems that the inability to love is the motive in After-Life whereas the inability to live life is Jigsaw's motive.While the acting from Justin Long & Christina Ricci is on par with their other performances in recent history, Liam Neeson offer a performance that will rival his performance in Taken.
Neeson is the reason this film is so suspenseful because he is able to create a character that can be viewed as delusional, insane, psychotic, or "gifted" without forcing the audience to believe only one of these characteristics.Entertainment wise this film is not a blockbuster but connects many good directorial and cinemagraphical elements.
The director and writer Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo (writing in tandem with Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk) asks us to suspend belief and muse about the idea that there is a time between 'death' and the actual burial (or other means of final interment/disposal) when the spirit may struggle with the idea of life ending.
In a rage she leaves the frustrated Coleman, subsequently is killed in a car accident, and is taken to a mortuary where mortician Elliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) begins preparing her body for the funeral.
Michos and the musical score by Paul Haslinger, and the presence of Liam Neeson who plays his role very straight and Christina Ricci who plays her role almost entirely in the nude, give the story the requisite creepy effect.
While most of film centres around the character of Anna Taylor it is a wise casting choice by Matthew Lessall as beautiful Christina Ricci gives an emotional performance as a girl who's is not sure if she is dead or alive.
After a horrific car accident, Anna (Christina Ricci) wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) preparing her body for her funeral.
As the funeral nears, Paul gets closer to unlocking the disturbing truth, but it could be too late; Anna may have already begun to cross over the other side.After Life is a clever psychological thriller with a very creepy and mysterious atmosphere.
The film also poses some interesting questions regarding the nature of life forcing the viewer to reflect on his own existence.Liam Neeson did a good job and Christina Ricci was exceptional in her role.
Liam Neeson and Christina Ricci totally or partially naked most of the time have top-notch performances, supported by an intelligent and original screenplay, tight direction and awesome music score.
For the most part Anna's life seems, well, rather lifeless - until she wakes up on mortician Liam Neeson's slab only to learn that she is in fact dead.
The plot is Anna Taylor (played by Christina Ricci) is in a car accident and wakes up on a mortuary slab, where she is attended to by Eliot Deacon (played by Liam Neeson).
And it is good to see that Justin Long is finally shedding that teenage role of his and stepping up into the bigger league of acting.If you like thrillers, then "After.Life" is definitely worth checking out.
Which leads her body to be in a process of being prepared for her funeral and the person that takes care of her body to look presentable during the funeral is played by Liam Neeson who does a great job with the roles he is given most of the time.
Sure there are aspect of the film that doesn't make any sense, but it didn't get to the point it got irritating to watch for the most part.***Spoilers below*** The title to this movie is misleading in a way.
This film is about a young woman who wakes up lying in the morgue, with a mortician insisting that she is already dead."After.Life" is such a good thriller!
Both interpretations were equally plausible (we never know the "truth" until the very end of the film (and even then my boyfriend was convinced she was dead all the time while I think she was alive!).An intelligent, scary, creepy, stunning, visual movie!!!
This is a very strange movie but nevertheless extremely watchable.SPOILER BEGINS This is the tale of a beautiful woman, Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) who walked out on her boyfriend, Paul Coleman (Justin Long) at a restaurant just before he was going to propose to her.She drives off crying and eventually is involved in a car accident and finds herself on an undertakers slab ready to be prepared for burial by Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson), the Funeral Director.Anna can move and speak and Eliot can see and hear her and of course Anna wants to know why she is where she is and Eliot tells her that the accident left her dead and he was going to prepare her for her funeral and burial.
He even shows her a copy of her Death Certificate.He tells her that he has a gift of being able to see and speak to the dead.From then on it was a cat and mouse game between Anna and Eliot, she trying to convince him that she is still alive and Eliot trying to get Anna to accept she was dead.Before she ended up in the Funeral Parlour Anna was a schoolteacher and one of her students Jack (Chandler Canterbury) insisted that he saw her peering out of the window in the Funeral Home.SPOILER ENDS The wonderful thing about this movie is that you simply did not know whether Anna was still alive or indeed dead until the very last minute of the movie and the ending was for most people totally unexpected although I thought I had figured it out about a minute before all was revealed and I am glad to say I was right.However I am not going to reveal the outcome I thoroughly recommend that you watch this movie.
At the time, I wondered why not, since it starred Christina Ricci, Liam Neeson, and Justin Long, not exactly the biggest of names but certainly serious actors who don't normally take schlock work just for a paycheck.Having now seen the movie, I can understand the difficulty.
"You're still in denial", he rebukes her.Meanwhile, Anna's boyfriend Paul Coleman (Long), whose proposal attempt the previous evening went badly awry, causing Anna to flee in tears, is also having trouble accepting that she's dead, especially after he gets what he thinks (and we see) is a phone call from her, tho in a ghastly inaudible whisper.The only other character of any significance is a young boy from Anna's class, Jack (Chandler Canterbury), who's fascinated with death and keeps dropping by the mortuary to chat about it.
In a distant echo of The 6th Sense, he comes close to being able to see dead people himself, and Deacon sees in him an incipient kindred spirit.The movie keeps us guessing all the way thru as to whether Anna is truly dead or whether Eliot has just drugged her and is playing some kind of really sick game.This interesting premise is one of the upsides.
The type of film you have to see twice so you know what to watch for and enjoy piecing together the puzzle long after the movie has ended.
You will never live again."In After.Life (cool title, right?) Christina Ricci plays Anna, a young school teacher who's drifting through life with a bottle of pills, unable to even connect to her boyfriend (Justin Long, who seems to play the main character's boyfriend in nearly every movie he's in) in the bedroom or in a simple conversation.
While the film did have a few editing errors (early evening to pitch black night, in the time it takes to find a key on a keyring?), the dialgoue was occasionally clunky, and some people may be put off by some of the questionable decisions that Anna makes, I thought this was a solid movie.
READ!This movie poses a simple question, and for me, I thought they should have named it, "After Life?", it would have drawn a much more intriguing audience.I'm not going to bore you with the story like all the other reviewers do, I'm going to tell you MY reaction to the movie, in the simplest terms I can.I 'Enjoyed' this movie, I really did, however, I cannot get my mind off Christina Ricci, I found myself on a 'viewer See-Saw' with her.
"After.Life" is Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vooslo's feature-film debut, starring Christina Ricci, Justin Long and Liam Neeson in a deliberation on what happens to us after we die.
Anna (played by Christina Ricci) is a schoolteacher who finds herself with an open head wound on a dissecting table where Elliot (Liam Neeson), a mortician, informs her in a formal tone that she died during a car accident.
sure it was somewhat entertaining...through stupidity.....had there been more action and a different ending...actually i think someone should redo this movie...so many things made no sense to me....i would elaborate but i think I'm traumatized from this movie...not for the story line...but just the fact that allowed my eyes ears and brains to take in such crap....good actors though....I'm actually surprised these actors didn't turn down the offer....unless....it was desperate times and needed to make some money....I'm not yet sure if this would be a movie to ever mention starring in...but i have to say i have seen worse movies.....
I also have to say that Justin Long really didn't strike home with me as Anna's boyfriend Paul, and the character of Jack - one of Anna's students (played by a young actor named Chandler Canterbury) who is supposed to share Deacon's gift of communicating with the dead - was a bit superfluous.
He added little to the story and was also kind of creepy in his own way.There's enough to this movie to make it worth watching, but it certainly isn't a classic by any means..
until finally the fellow reviewer correctly concludes the answer is 'surprisingly evasive.' I will say surprisingly nonsensical.Another reviewer correctly hones in on the fact that the film's sub-plots of boyfriend and little boy 'lead no where.' At this point cinematic frustration was gathering speed.After.life does not hold a smidgen of a candle to the similar genre likes of The Sixth Sense with its ultra intelligent, audience grabbing script.
Rather, here the director and screenplay take the audience for lack luster Alice-in-Wonderland after-life ride where clues are not clues, what you see is not what you see and what you get is not what you paid for unless, that is, you paid to see the awesome looking Christina Ricci baring it all in many or possibly most of her scenes.Finally, when the film should be heading toward 'resolution' a police officer arrives at Liam Neeson's funeral home to 'visit' with his deceased brother.
I was expecting that Paul Coleman (Justin Long) would eventually move on with his life.Well i didn't quite understand the horror part of this movie, i haven't figured it out yet, if their deaths has something to do with Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) or not..
The funeral director played by Neeson holds so much power and control over the 'dead', the question we all keep asking after watching this movie is - was she really dead or alive?
But the title of the film is 'Afterlife', so we should read into that I think.Gonna watch the movie a couple more times, puzzled by the beginning and the funeral for the old man - why should Anna attend that funeral and why was she seemingly already familiar with the funeral director?
Jack the boy in Anna Taylors class is also an interesting character and there are lots of questions about him in this movie.Yes, there are lots of inconsistencies in a medical sense as to how the funeral director could keep the woman (and others) alive and for what benefit but it didn't seem to matter overall because the suspense balanced on a boyfriend who was paranoiac in not accepting his girlfriends death and a girlfriend who didn't want to live but had everything to live for (oddly, a theme of Coelhos 'Veronica Decides to Die).There is some female nudity of Anna Taylor while she is 'detained' but nothing sexual and throughout only a few occasional swear words in passing, nothing that should offend a conservative audience.Definitely a film to watch more than once because the director has injected lots of little intricate details which are easy to miss (like the 'chicken burial bit') but never mind, in a month when films in circulation are poor, this is up there as one of the best around at the moment.
This movie is good for only one thing - Mr. Skin - because you see Christina Ricci's breasts several times.Other than that, there is no reason to watch this piece of garbage.
The film suggests that the people who are sent to Liam Neeson's funeral home might not be dead...either:(A) they are dead and he can communicate with the dead, or(B) they are not dead and he's burying people who are aliveBut you very quickly realize that you don't care, because it's almost too boring to describe in words; the best I can do is to say that it would be like watching NASCAR, if each car raced by itself, and if there was a speed limit..
Luckily for Christina in this movie, she spends the majority of the time playing a role that I now realize (after still being a fan for so many years) she seems best suited for; a corpse.The character's initial lack of emotion and apparent detachment is later elaborated on through the course of the picture.
While trying to convince Anna and the audience if she's indeed dead or alive, the director creates a deliberate ambiguity so audiences never really know what is truly happening.Jack, who felt a strong connection to his teacher, gets curious and wanders outside the funeral home catching a glimpse of Ms. Taylor, or did he?
Marshall, James Swisher (Executive Producers); Anastas Michos (Cinematographer); Ford Wheeler (Production Designer); Niven Howie (Editor); Paul Haslinger (Composer)Cast includes: Christina Ricci (Anna Taylor), Liam Neeson (Eliot Deacon), Justin Long (Paul Coleman), Chandler Canterbury (Jack), Celia Weston (Beatrice Taylor), Josh Charles (Tom Peterson), Shuler Hensley (Vincent Miller)"How can you save yourself if you're already dead?"A discontented schoolteacher (Ricci) wakes up immobile following a serious car accident, to be told by the solemn undertaker who is preparing her body (Neeson) that she is dead and is being helped to cross over to the afterlife, but her grieving boyfriend (Long) will not accept her death and confronts the mortician.Beautifully shot supernatural horror, with a striking prominence of the colour red (Ricci spends much of the movie in just a red slip, or naked), with Neeson bringing an ethereal gravitas to his role of the respectable and (apparently) kindly funeral director - or is he a serial killer?Subtle clues and an ambiguous ending enhance the mystery.Blu-ray Extras: Commentary, Featurette, Trailer.
Anna, played by Christina Ricci, wakes up in the mortuary of the local funeral director, Liam Neeson.
After a woman is killed in a car crash she is sent to the morgue, then to the Funeral Director,, played by Liam Neeson,, he is very creepy in this picture , apparently he has the ability to talk to the dead, we are not sure if she's dead or alive, or as they say "crossing over", her boyfriend doesn't want to believe it so he starts to investigate.
Christina Ricci gives on heck of a performance as our "dead" girl,, at points in the movie you the viewer even start to wonder, as if like hey maybe she ain't quite dead yet,, the evil Funeral Director wastes no time in preparing her for her final moments before burial, the boyfriend has to figure out what is going on and if she is still alive before she is due to be buried,, interesting movie..
If you want to watch or ogle at Ricci's young body, partially or fully nude, laying down or running helplessly around in either a minimal red slip or nothing at all, this is your movie.If you want to appreciate Liam Neeson's manly reserve, or Justin Long's nice guy schtick, you'll get a little of each.
There's a lot of mood stuff, a lot of atmosphere setting, and plenty of plot points which end up going nowhere, but as a film, AFTER.LIFE is a disappointment.The acceptable Christina Ricci stars as a young woman involved in a car accident who wakes up on a mortuary table, being attended to by the sinister Liam Neeson.
AFTER.LIFE is more of an insipid mystery than a real horror film, and as such it's not really worth your time; the lack of explanation makes it an all-too-frustrating watch..
Good performances all round, particularly from Christina Ricci as Anna Taylor and Liam Neeson as Eliot Deacon.
Anna gets into a car accident and wakes up on the preparation table of funeral director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson).
Both Christina Ricci and Liam Neeson put on great performances: her Anna sinks into confusion about her life (or death?), while his Eliot comes across as the typical guy whose nice demeanor might be hiding something.
What a pity for such a good actor like Liam Neeson to have lost time in shooting a movie without any sense for the viewer.
What a pity for such a good actor like Liam Neeson to have lost time in shooting a movie without any sense for the viewer.
The rest of the movie covers Liam Neeson (the undertaker)and his attempts to convince her that she is in fact dead and help prepare her for her funeral.
This movie is about people not really living their lives, wandering through life like they're dead already.