Afterlife (2010)

[DA_Champion]

Afterlife (2010)
Rotten Tomatoes: 26%
IMDB: 6.0/10
Director: Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
Running Time: 104 minutes
Staaring: Christina Ricci, Justin Long, Liam Neeson

After a horrific 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 still 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 over to the other side.

I'm wondering if anybody's seen this obscure movie. I bought it because I thought it would be a vampire movie starring Ricci and Neeson, but it has actually nothing to do with vampires. There's a relatively original plot that I don't know how to interpret, I'm not sure what happened, it's bothering me, and it's causing me to think about the movie a lot in the days following.

The movie is original, has a different feel, is making me think, and is beautifully shot. It has a few set-ups and payoffs. On the downside, some of the setups in the first third of the movie feel excruciatingly unnatural.

The most surface-level plot of the movie is that Ricci's character died, she spends a week or two on Earth as a spirit, only certain people can see spirits and the funeral-director played by Neeson is one of those people. He consoles and aggravates people as they get ready for the other side. But ... I don't think that's what happened, I think that she was alive the whole time and Neeson's character is a lunatic.

And I really don't get the ending.

 

[FrozenBanana00]

Yeah I've seen it. It was really weird, the idea that she's alive but not? He keeps saying she's dead but she feels she's alive. You see her walking around and everything. It was creepy, that's for sure.

 

[DA_Champion]

Yeah I've seen it. It was really weird, the idea that she's alive but not? He keeps saying she's dead but she feels she's alive. You see her walking around and everything. It was creepy, that's for sure.

What's your interpretation, was she really dead?

 

[FrozenBanana00]

What's your interpretation, was she really dead?

I'd probably need to watch it again but when I saw it I felt that she wasnt. He kept trying to keep her contained and he was real suspicious. So yeah, I think she was alive and he just kept trying to brainwash her/drug her to think otherwise.

 

[MMB]

Saw this movie some months ago.

I too think she was alive. The only thing that made me wonder was that she must have been starving down there if she actually was alive.

On the other hand he did drug her, it's possible that he injected some sort of nutrition to keep her alive too. Or maybe he even fed her and told her that even the dead has to eat or some bs. Would be weird tho when she starts peeing and ****, that has to be a pretty sure sign you're alive

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Twitter: @MadMovieBro

 

[FrozenBanana00]

But then maybe the drugs he gave her affected her in some way. She passed out for hours at a time. So maybe she went to the bathroom in her sleep or something. I dunno. Who knows what drugs he injected her with and the affects they had.

 

[DA_Champion]

People can actually survive a long time without food, certainly a week. It's water they need.

As for going to the bathroom, even dead bodies go to the bathroom, watch the first episode of six feet under ;-) I'm assuming she went off screen lol.

But if she were really alive the whole time, why did her phone call sound like static?

 

[FrozenBanana00]

Because maybe he tampered with her phone to make it sound that way? She was alive! Alive I tell you!

 

[Kane52630]

It's been years but I remember it being pretty awful. I liked Liam Neeson, Justin Long, and Ricci, but the movie ultimately fails with a terrible script.

 

[DA_Champion]

Because maybe he tampered with her phone to make it sound that way? She was alive! Alive I tell you!

I just listened to the commentary.

Spoiler

He thought he was being pranked, and he was not trusting his own instincts since he had already had two hallucinations. The one of Anna outside her car in the police depo, and the one of Anna in the shower ripping out her heart.

She is alive in the movie. The director said she made it deliberately ambiguous but ultimately there are six hints that give away that she is alive.

The first is that Neeson's van is responsible for her car accident.

The second is the little duck the boy has.

The third is Ricci's breath.

The fourth is hydronium bromide.

The fifth is that Neeson takes polaroids of his victims, which is something psychopaths do, they keep a memento of each victim. On his wall of photos, some of the people have open eyes and others have closed eyes, those with open eyes were buried alive.

I missed what the sixth was.

I have watched this twice in a week and watched the commentaries and the added making of special. I'm very satisfied with this movie, it was thoughtful, rich, asked and answered some interesting questions.

I'm impressed that Liam Neeson would agree to act in these micro budget films on the basis if their scripts. He was slso good in Chloe.

 

[FrozenBanana00]

I knew it! She had to be alive. It just made sense. Why would he keep her trapped there if she was dead? Why would she be walking around and trying to escape? It totally made sense that she was alive. Plus you always got the feeling that Neeson's character was creepy and weird.