After.Life (2009)

AFTER.LIFE (2009) – Life is the symptom. Death is the cure. Following a terrible car crash, a woman awakes to find an enigmatic mortician preparing her for burial. After a horrific car crash, a young teacher awakes on a mortuary slab. The funeral director convinces her she is not alive but transitioning into the spirit world. Is he telling the truth? Young couple Paul and Anna are toying with the prospect of marriage when they have a chance encounter with Eliot, a mysterious undertaker who claims he can speak with the dead. When Anna becomes caught in the otherworldly realm between life and death, she risks being buried alive. Will Eliot help her, or is he being driven by darker motivations? After a horrible car accident, Anna wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon 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 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 to the other side.

After.Life is a smart little horror-thriller with a pretty original hook: An undertaker who can talk to the recently deceased corpses on his slabs. But is he a malevolent force trying to doom people whose lives have yet to fully run their course, or does he just have a gift fir talking to departed souls, who trust him because they’re understandably terrified by their new circumstances? Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo smartly walks this line throughout, giving Liam Neeson’s character a sinister edge, but stopping short of defining him as an out-and-out villain. The story really has to do with the struggles of the protagonist, Anna (Christina Ricci), to determine what’s real and what isn’t – what parts of the funeral home in which she’s confined can she actually manipulate, and what parts are only in her imagination. Again, Wojtowics-Vosloo is reluctant to give concrete answers and she heightens the tension by getting excellent camerawork and editing from her team. The visuals in After.Life really pop and Ricci complements that aesthetic scheme. With her big, haunted eyes, her gaunt frame and her sallow complexion, it’s like she was born to play a corpse. This is by no means a backhanded compliment, because she gives the character true pathos and expertly dramatizes the panic and fear a body would feel in that kind of purgatory. Justin Long is also a good choice as her fiancée, sinking his teeth into some dramatic work that suits him well. Sine After.Life is all about mood and atmosphere, it’s worth mentioning another performer who contributes – namely, Celia Weston as Anna’s wheelchair -bound mother. She simply drips with a moribund contempt for Long’s character, believing he contributed to the premature end of her estranged daughter’s life. An underdog gem, After.Life announces Wojtowicz-Vosloo as a filmmaker to watch.

Eliot Deacon owns a funeral parlor and talks softly to the corpses he prepares for burial. Middle school teacher Anna Taylor attends the funeral of her piano teacher where she meets Eliot. That night Anna argues with her boyfriend Paul at a restaurant. She drives off in a state of distress and has a traffic accident. She awakens on an exam table in the funeral parlor to find the funeral director, Eliot, cutting off her clothes and telling her she has died. He tells Anna he has a gift that he can hear the dead. Eliot has a collection of photographs of corpses whom he helped “make the transition”. Eliot injects Anna regularly with a fictional drug called hydronium brombide to “relax the muscles and keep rigor mortis from settling in.” Paul asks to see Anna’s body but Eliot does not allow it on the grounds he is not family. Anna unsuccessfully attempts to escape several times. Eliot tells her she must let go of life as she had not really been living anyway. Eventually, Anna escapes and finds a room with a phone where she reaches Paul, who hangs up thinking it’s a prank. Anna comes to believe she has actually died when Eliot lets her see her corpse-like self in a mirror. One of Anna’s students sees her and alerts Paul, who begins to suspect she is still alive.

Anna’s student visits the funeral parlor and Eliot tells him that they share a gift, the same as Jesus, who raised Lazarus and he offers to teach the boy more. The boy accepts is seen burying a live chick in a box. During the final preparation for the funeral, Anna asks to see herself one last time. Eliot holds up a small mirror and while she stares at herself she notices her breath condensing on the glass and accuses Eliot of having lied to her about her being dead. Eliot injects her one last time and she slip into unconsciousness. At the funeral, Paul places the engagement ring he intended to give her the night of the crash on her finger. After the funeral, Paul drinks heavily and behaves aggressively with Eliot, who seems to taunt him and encourage him to see for himself that Anna is really dead, telling him there is not much time. Meanwhile, Anna is shown awakening to the sound of earth being shoveled onto her coffin. She cries out and desperately scratches the satin lining of her coffin lid. Driving under the influence of alcohol, Paul rushes to the cemetery. They are shown embracing and Anna tells Paul she has always loved him. Paul asks what the odd sound is that he hears and Anna explains it is the sound of Eliot’s gloves and scissors on the table as he prepares Paul’s body. A moment later, he finds himself in the funeral parlor with Eliot standing over him preparing his body as he did Anna’s. Eliot tells him that he never made it to the cemetery due to a car accident which killed him. Paul protests that he is alive until the moment Eliot inserts a trocar deep into his torso.

After a horrific car accident, Anna wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon preparing her for her funeral. Confused, terrified and feeing still very much alive, Anna doesn’t believe she’s dead, despite the funeral director’s reassurances she’s 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’s forced to accept her own death. But Anna’s grief-stricken boyfriend Paul can’t shake the suspicion that Eliot isn’t what he appears to be.

After a horrific car accident, Anna Taylor wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon 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 still can’t shake the nagging suspicion that Elliot 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.