After.Life

A funeral director appears to have the gift of speaking to dead, and help with their passing to the either side. However, his latest work is a young female school teacher, but is she really dead or is he fulfilling a sick fantasy.

Director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Voslo's After-life is intriguing, thought provoking and original throughout. The stark style of filming is reminiscent of Body to Body (2003) aka "Corps à corps".

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. Although, Ricci is on the mortuary slab and semi-nude for most part of the film, comparably to Anna Falchi in Dellamorte Dellamore (1994), to Wojtowicz-Voslo's credit it's never in an explicit or over sexualized presentation.

Liam Neeson is convincing as the mortician Eliot Deacon in a subtle performance where he communicates with the dead. He's creepy and cold, although not given a back story, his character has many layers. The tension between Neeson and Ricci is note-worthy and create some great moments.

Die Hard 4 star Justin Long is average as Ricci's fiancée, as he doesn't have the convincing weight of the other players. However, Young Chandler Canterbury as the little boy Jack is memorable. The supporting cast are a mix of familiar face's including Josh Charles and Shuler Hensley and the other officers.

Direction, lighting and music create an eerie atmosphere for this effective thriller mystery. There's horror too in the way of Anna Taylor's visions and Deacon working on the deceased prepping their bodies.

Overall, simmering entertainment with a closing act to ponder over.

"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.

I will admit, my expectations for "After.Life" were in the low… I was considering something along the lines of "I Know Who Killed Me", with a better cast. At least the trailer made it seem that way. Oh, how wrong I was. Dead wrong.

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. Anna's disbelief and denial follow immediately. It's not the kind of news you hear everyday. Questions pop-up. Is she suffering from a mental disease, some personality disorder or maybe there is no rational explanation for the occurring events - it is what it is? In other words: WHAT IS GOING ON? The intrigue has a strong grip on the audience…. More than a horror film, it's a psychological drama with a supernatural theme to it, although it manages to divert in a bad direction on occasion (the heart-pulling scene is as horror cliché as it gets).

Neeson gives Elliot a priest-like treatment. He's a man with a great work ethic, utter respect for the dead, and blessed/cursed with a gift. He can talk to the deceased. Throughout the days that he prepares Anna's body for her funeral, he tries to help her cope with her death. Unfortunately for him, she doesn't buy into his views and attempts to escape and contact her fiancé (Justin Long), who, because of her death, is in a fever-like state, where he starts to questions his sanity.

I would say that this is Neeson's most memorable performance in a while. It just has such… resonance.

We all know that Christina Ricci isn't the best actress around in Hollywood, very flavorless, but in this case, by draining the life out of the role she, coincidentally, makes it work. I guess the director did the best with what she had to work with. Also the fact that she was willing to stay half-nude throughout a considerable amount of time on screen must have made her most desirable as a corpse from a producer's point of view.

The film doesn't indulge on the visuals; rather, it keeps everything on the minimum—just enough to keep you shivering. The eerie music is certainly a strong tool that ads on to the feel of heighten reality.

Luckily, "After. Life" is not just good as it's synopsis. Sure, the film takes elements from various horror films, but it puts them to a really good use. It builds around them and evolves.

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. She wakes up and finds herself in a mortuary with the undertaker, Elliott Deacon (Liam Neeson), talking to her, explaining that she is dead.

However, as time goes on, it becomes evident that not everything is what it seems. Deacon always locks the doors as if afraid that she may escape and every attempt she has made to communicate with her boyfriend, Paul Coleman (Justin Long) is disrupted by Deacon.

Is Anna really dead? Or does the undertaker have a more sinister plan for keeping her?

The film keeps you in suspense and guessing until the very end.

After-Life embraces the mystery/thriller sub-genre of the drama genre's style and refuses to relent even up to and after its conclusion. The film relies on the question of whether or not those in the funeral home are dead or only being led to believe they are dead. Despite having evidence for both sides of this issue displayed throughout the film, you will be left to decide for yourself as to which side you believe. It is possible that both scenarios occur actively in the film. This film has a "Saw" style of lesson-learning involved in the story. 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 musical score is as eerie as John Carpenter's Halloween score. There is not much bad that can be said about this film. The shot choices are sensible and simple without being overtly creative. This is a film that allows the story to evolve on its own and the actors to the story its character.

"After.Life" is a really intense thriller that will keep you in the dark, feeding you just small pieces to keep you guessing and speculating. And that worked so well.

The story told in "After.Life" is really riveting and compelling. It is the type of story that will keep you in suspense and wanting to see what happens next. 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 the story lets you guessing if she really is dead or alive, and whether it is all a ruse set up by Deacon. I am not going to reveal any more of the story, except that it was fantastic.

I like movies that keep you in the dark and have you grasping at clues, trying to figure out what really is happening. And "After.Life" really takes you on a thrill ride where you don't know what is true or false.

The cast was really good and they did good jobs with their roles. Especially Liam Neeson, in the role of the mortician Eliot Deacon. He was right on the money with this performance. I read that they had initially casted Alfred Molina for this part, and I think he would have done an equally good job (as he has been seen in a mortician role before). And also Christina Ricci was doing a good job with her role as Anna Taylor. 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. The story blew me away and took me completely off guard. I hadn't expected it to be anything like this.