Anna, played by Christina Ricci, wakes up in the mortuary of the local funeral director, Liam Neeson. He tells her she's dead and he's preparing her body for her burial. What follows is thought-provoking and almost unbearably macabre. The actors were amazing, even Justin Long, and the directing stylish with a very distinctive look.This movie is not for everyone. People will either love it, or despise it with all their heart. But I'd recommend it to anyone who has a taste for dark humor and enjoys putting the pieces of the puzzle together over and over, long after the movie's ended. That said the movie never had a chance commercially. Combine the fact that most people are just going to find it unbearably weird with the fact that the ending is not tied up in a neat bow, and it's clear that this movie will stay underground. However, if you're looking for a beautiful experience with a unique film, After.Life is just about as good as it gets.

Or is it "turbid"? I think in this case, both apply. The pace is nothing short of funereal. What is the underlying theme here? Is it a horror flick? A heavy philosophical treatise on the meaning of life and death? Did anyone really know? It's not clear whether the writer ever had a grip on things and watched it get lost in the film's execution, or whether it remained this muddled at every stage. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when this idea was pitched. How was Liam Neeson corralled into participating in this unfocused mess? It really is, as one reviewer suggested, a episode of Twilight Zone that runs three times normal length and compensates by showing us lots of Ms. Ricci's flesh. She's lovely, but I'm not sure she's worth that extra hour.

I watched this in a kind of morbid sense of dread way. I have always found the notion of how the professionals handle and deal with the dead very upsetting. The idea of someone stripping and handling and generally disposing of a body and all the associated indignities truly repulses me. I found the nudity of Christina Ricci a little exploitative it could have been more balanced with the character of Justin Long being similarly exposed. Also I found some of the lines that the young boy is involved with a little distasteful. I don't really think it will do a lot for that young child to have to deal with the grim and harsh realities of death so graphically. I was always a little concerned with the plots of "two and a half men" and the ugly sleazy aspects that the youngster had to deal with, and now as an adult he has discussed that it did have a detrimental affect on him. The film in it's way is fascinating, but not for the faint hearted or overly sensitive.

"After.Life" is a movie that begins with a bad acting from the main actors, which made me think it would be a total mess. Afterwards, it turned out to be just a regular picture. The main controversy in this awkward story involves life and death; filmmakers built situations that made spectator curious whether the girl was really dead or not. That would've been a great idea, if it hasn't been used in lots of other movies before 2009. Also, from the get go we're used with the idea that Anna is dead, and the outcome isn't any different from that, so there is no surprise for the spectator-- which is important in movies that deal with hereafter and mystery. The plot is very slow-paced, and I believe the biggest part of the audience won't be patient enough to reach it's ending. Also, considering this film has been labeled as an horror back when released, I believe the audience must have felt cheated, since there is no gore, tension or anything that may frighten the spectator. For fans of the subject, I suggest you pictures that are way better, like 2000's "Waking the Dead" or 2008's "Passengers", and I'm not mentioning "The Others" or "The Sixth Sense" because everybody out there has seen them at least one time in their lives.