SYNOPSIS
Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) wakes up on a white slab in the middle of strange room wearing a red dress. She is told be Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) she is in his mortuary. She is told she is dead.
CRITIQUE
Director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s After.Life has a great premise. One can immediately imagine what it would be like to be in Anna’s situation, to wake up in a strange, coldly sanitary room and be told you are dead and that you’re body is being prepared for its funeral while your soul is being prepared for the afterlife. It’s creepy and unsettling as hell, especially if it might be some put-on by a crazy mortician with a possible penchant for taking the lives of those who doesn’t feel have been valuing it and not truly the spiritually significant conversation one is being led to believe.
And for a while it kind of works. Wojtowicz-Vosloo crafts an extremely eerie atmosphere that’s deeply unsettling, both Neeson and Ricci playing off one another in a way that is both sinister yet believable. It’s like a good, not great, “Twilight Zone” episode, the only thing missing the signature theme music and Rod Serling letting viewers in on the story’s moral.
The problem is that the script, credited to the director, Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk plays its cards about to obviously, the underlying clues to the central mystery giving the game away far too quickly. It’s hard to create a sense of uncertainty when the answers are readily apparent, and as much as the premise is a winner the execution behind it leaves quite a bit too be desired.
It doesn’t help that subplots involving Anna’s grieving boyfriend Paul (Justin Long) and one of her creepy, death-obsessed elementary school students Jack (Chandler Canterbury) don’t add as much to things as the filmmakers obviously hope they do. Most of their actions don’t make a heck of a lot of sense, both of their backstories only confusing matters more than they do anything else. Also, at 103 minutes the film doesn’t warrant its length, the concept more worthy of a 45-minute short than it is a feature-length motion picture.
But it is very well shot Anastas N. Michos (Cadillac Records) and scored by veteran composer Paul Haslinger (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), while the acting by the entire cast (including the way underutilized Celia Weston and Josh Charles) is quite good. There are some excellent moments, especially during the first third, and while elements of the climax are a bit too similar to The Vanishing the punch they pack is still rather impressive.
If only everything didn’t feel so forgone for much of the second half, and as scary as bits can feel on the whole the wallop they leave is hardly lasting. More than that, at a certain point credibility flies completely out the window, and for a story like this to connect on a viscerally terrifying level I just think one has to believe the events being depicted could actually happen. But Wojtowicz-Vosloo lost me at a certain point, and as much I want to give the film props for premise, acting and technical precision I have to ease that urge back a few notches thanks to structural problems that undo the narrative.
I do wish After.Life had been given a chance to live or die at the multiplex, audiences deserving of the chance to make their opinions known at the box office. This is an original horror-thriller with an intriguing central conceit, and I’d be curious to know if viewers would have taken to it with a bit more vim and vigor than I ultimately did.
THE VIDEO
After.Life is presented on 25GB disc with a 2.40:1/1080p widescreen transfer. The images are crisp, clean and sharp free of excess grain and noise.
THE AUDIO
The film is presented with a PCM 5.1 uncompressed soundtrack in English Dolby Surround 5.1 with English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
THE EXTRAS
The Blu-ray’s extras include:
Audio Commentary with director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo – It’s a solid commentary track, nothing more, but there is plenty to be learned by listening to it (including Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s Shakespearean obsession and her constant comparisons of this film to Romeo & Juliet).
Delving into the After.Life: The Art of Making a Thriller – Really nothing more than an extended interview with the director masquerading as a behind-the-scenes featurette. Nothing special, but nothing horrible, either.
Theatrical Trailer
FINAL THOUGHTS
After.Life offers up an intriguing premise that’s unsettling and creepy, but even though it is very well acted by its leads and technically extremely well done the script’s obviousness undoes things to a level that is sadly unsatisfying. Worthy of a rental for genre fans (or for those longing to see Ricci naked – very naked), but otherwise too disappointing in the end for me to ultimately recommend.
