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AFTER.LIFE (yes, that is a dot between the two words suggesting this may be a video game...or blog, or something created in cyberspace) takes a long shot; can a one-line story keep an audience's attention for over 103 minutes? Not having noticed whether this played in theaters or is one of the direct to DVD films, that question is tough to answer. 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. It is an interesting hiatus to study and fortunately a cast was selected to portray the characters involved in this internet-like game that makes it watchable.

Schoolteacher Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) and Paul Coleman (Justin Long) are in a rocky relationship: they could be headed toward marriage but Anna has trust issues that prevent her from committing to same. 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. Anna is unable to move anything but her mouth and denies that she is dead, a situation Deacon encounters with most every dead body he prepares for burial. And this is where the conundrum begins: is Anna dead or is she alive, kept prisoner by Deacon? Anna's hateful mother (Celia Watson) visits her daughter's corpse and has few kind words to say. Paul is devastated, comforted by his colleague Tom (Josh Charles), that Anna is dead and visits the mortuary to see the body but is refused admittance by Deacon. One of Anna's young students Jack (Chandler Canterbury) seems to have a special affinity for the dead and spies on the mortuary where he sees Anna standing in a window. Anna and Deacon have long talks about the after.life - that time when the soul is preparing to leave the corporal body - and Deacon continues to prepare Anna for her funeral. As she is buried the facts of the story straighten out a bit, but to reveal those facts would ruin what little suspense there is in this film.

Though the moody atmosphere is well captured by both the director of photography Anastas N. 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. Yes, it is corny in many ways, but at least it is a bit different from the formula movies that keep churning out of Hollywood.

Grady Harp

"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" 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.

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. 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 (Justin Long) still can't shake the nagging suspicion that Eliot isn't what he appears to be. Paul desperately tries to convince the local Police Chief (Josh Charles) that Anna's alive. But the more he investigates her death, the more they question his sanity. 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 concept behind the story is very cool but the execution is definitely what made the film. Is Anna alive or is she dead? That is the big question of After Life and the film goes back and forth delivering several clues, some subtle, some not so much. And even though the film tries to be ambiguous, by the end, it's pretty clear what happened. Still, it will drive you crazy, in a good way of course. 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. Justin Long however, was largely disappointing. Overall, it's nothing outstanding but definitely a very entertaining flick and the director was able to put a different spin on a often used concept.

6.5/10