After.Life Movie Review
Christina Ricci has the wounds and makeup of a dead person, but much more energy, in "After.Life."
Dead Ends
“After.Life” is as baffling as the period in its title.
“I’m not dead!” As signature lines in thrillers go, it’s not one that curdles the blood, at least not the over-emphatic way Christina Ricci delivers it as a dead girl in denial in “After.Life.” Perhaps first-time director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo didn’t realize it’s also a memorable phrase from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” But her entire film feels like it was fostered by a limited sense of the movies. It’s about a young woman, Anna (Ricci), killed during a driving accident after an argument with her boyfriend (Justin Long). She awakens on the slab of a creepy mortician (Liam Neeson) who chides her when she complains of her circumstances. That’s right, Anna is still a whiny bitch, even though she’s dead. Or is she? “After.Life” is supposed to be a mind-blowing thriller, but it comes off more like someone’s rude parody of a conventional one.
The movie gleefully keeps us guessing as it keeps Anna moaning and pacing in the basement, whipping her distraught boyfriend into a frenzy as it throws in a creepy kid (Chandler Canterbury) borrowed from “The Sixth Sense,” and a mother (Celia Weston, for some reason both grieving and churlish) for good measure. But the movie doesn’t add up to more than a string of clichés. Neeson’s character is constantly doing things intended to cast doubt on himself, but what sinister motives did Wojtowicz-Vosloo have for leading us into all the movie’s dead ends? Whatever payoff was intended must have died in the editing room.
Neeson has now performed a hat trick of lackluster role choices for 2010 when you add “After.Life” to “Chloe” and “Clash of the Titans.” Perhaps the iconic actor is indomitable, as well might be the scantily-clad Ricci. Both have far too much star power to have their careers killed by this muddle-headed work, which will probably get by alright in the DVD afterlife. (R) 107 min.
