After.Life

If you thought Christina Ricci showed a lot of skin in 2006’s Black Snake Moan, she shows even more in After.Life.

This is the first full-length feature film directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo. She also co-wrote the screenplay with first-time writers Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk.

These rookies do a good job of creating a very entertaining movie…almost.

Anna Taylor (Ricci), a teacher, has an over-bearing mother that wants to be taken care of and a boyfriend, Paul (Justin Long), that she always fights with. After having another fight with Paul, Anna storms out and dies in a car accident. Or does she?

Anna wakes up on a slab with a creepy-looking funeral director named Eliot Deacon (Liam Nesson) standing over her. Anna thinks she is still alive, but Eliot tries to convince her that she is indeed dead.

With only 3 days until her funeral, Anna must figure out if she is really dead or is she going to be another victim of a madman that claims he can talk with the deceased.

In their debut effort Wojtowicz-Vosloo, Korolczuk, and Vosloo dream up a story that is full of suspense. You don’t really know if Anna is alive or dead. If you watch closely, there are little clues sprinkled in to give you an idea of what is the truth, but you’re still not sure until the very end.

Where After.Life starts to go wrong is the inclusion of these eerie-like dream sequences that I guess are suppose to make the little hairs on the backs of our necks stand up with fear, but all these scenes really accomplish is to break up the continuity of the film.

These scenes are more of an irritation than an enhancement on an otherwise chilling movie.

The best performances come from Liam Nesson and young-actor Chandler Canterbury (Knowing) as Jack, one of Anna’s students who has an unhealthy interest in death. Nesson really shines in a different kind of role for him. He causes just about as many chills as Anthony Perkins did in the Psycho movies.

If Hollywood ever does another remake of The Omen (1976), Chandler Canterbury would be perfect for the role of Damien. This kid can play scary wonderfully.

It is hard to pay attention to Christina Ricci acting, when she is running around half-naked in a little red slip or is completely naked. Ricci does a decent job of playing someone caught in the in-between of life and death, but will anyone really notice, when she shows so much of herself so often.

Justin Long is very good in those Mac/PC commercials. He is OK in romantic comedies, but when it comes to acting with real heart-felt emotion, he needs more practice. Long’s Paul just seemed too whiny. I didn’t feel any sympathy for him for the tremendous amount of pain that he was suppose to be feeling.

The production design by Ford Wheeler (Any Given Sunday) deserves some mention. The funeral home of Eliot’s is just as creepy as he is. It looks like it could have been the home of Dracula at some time. The room where Eliot prepares the bodies of the dead for their funerals, with its gleaming white walls and floor and steal gray slab, is as devoid of color and emotion as is Eliot himself.

The most horrifying image of the whole movie was seeing a topless 80+ year old actress laying dead on a gurney. That may cause me more nightmares than anything else in this whole film.

After.Life had a chance to be a top-notch thriller, but in the end, it comes up short.

After.Life is now available on DVD.