afterlife

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Directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
Starring Liam Neeson, Justin Long, Christina Ricci, Chandler Canterbury, Josh Charles, Celia Weston

This is a strange film. Billed as a psychological thriller, but is really a creepy horror movie dealing with a very twisted serial killer. Or is it? That’s the beauty of this film. All throughout the movie, you’re pretty sure what is really going on, but you’re never really positive since they never tell you one way or another. That in itself, might just piss off a few film fans that like to know the outcome of a movie and not have to think.

After a car accident, Ricci wakes up in the basement of a funeral parlor, being prepped for her own funeral. She can’t really move that much at first, and is told by the mortician, played by Neeson, that she is really dead, but she just doesn’t know it yet. Of course, she doesn’t believe it since she feels alive. But the calm Neeson tries to explain what is happening to her, that she is going through the different stages of death. Her boyfriend, played by Justin Long, is having a hard time believing that she is really dead as well.

Is Neeson really a serial killer who is convincing his victims that they are really dead, only to bury them alive. Or does he have this special gift where he can talk to the dead, and get irritated at times since they never seem to believe him when he tells them the truth. There are several things in the film that really point to Neeson being a serial killer, such as taking photos of his victims and posting them on a wall in his bedroom. And that fact that he always drugs Ricci before someone is coming to see her. But just when you’re convinced, they show you something else that makes you wonder.

Neeson is great as the smooth talking mortician, who remains calm most of the time, but does get irritated at the “dead” when they never believe him. The film gets even darker when it looks like he will be taking on a young apprentice. Ricci looking pretty good throughout the movie, even when she is a “corpse”. Since her character is so depressed to begin with, we can understand why she doesn’t have that fight-to-live feelings that most of us would think would make her want to escape more.

This was the first feature film for the young female director, Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo. She graduated from film school in New York after deciding the film schools in her home in Poland would not be the best way about getting a film made. Shortly after graduating, she started working on the script for AFTER.LIFE. For her first feature film, we think she might be someone to keep an eye on.

This may not be the type of film for everyone since the plot is sort of ambiguous; though we were pretty convinced what is was going on. But that is one thing that we really liked about it. But had it not been for the stellar leads here, the movie might not have been as easy to hold the viewers attention due to the subtleness of it all.