After.Life (2010)

[TerrorScribe]

[SIZE="5"]After.Life (2010)[/SIZE]
Rated R

Directed by: Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo

Written by: Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo and Paul Vosloo

Starring
Christina Ricci
Liam Neeson
Justin Long
Chandler Canterbury

Running time: 95 minutes

Ah, the things we'll do for money. The favorite excuse, I think, is "I was young and needed the gold pieces," but face it – young or old – sometimes, we just need the coin. For me, that thing was DJing. I did a lot of that in some pretty dubious clubs before I moved off to the rustic wilds of Wyoming. Once I got there, I told myself I was done with it. Of course, I was wrong and the first job I was able to land there was DJing in a bar behind a liquor store. I hated it. To me, DJing is a job for men younger in mind than me, but when you need money, "any port in a storm…"

Now this may or may not have been the case with "After.Life", but I certainly wondered if people weren't just in it for the payday. It certainly wasn't for the script.

"After.Life" tells the muddled story of Anna (Christina Ricci). Our introduction to her is while she's having sex - the first of many nude scenes for Ms. Ricci but more on that later – with her boyfriend, Paul (noted Keanu Reeves starter kit Justin Long). She's not happy. And she has some unnamed medical issue that makes her nose bleed and requires her to take medication. Or maybe she just likes to take pills and is prone to nosebleeds from the dry Ohio air. Who knows?

But I digress.

After the sex, Anna goes to the school where she teaches and she runs into her student, Jack (Chandler Canterbury), who is being picked on, no doubt, for being creepy. Later, she goes to a funeral at the funeral home run by Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson). Lastly, she meets Paul for dinner, who tried, rather poorly, tell her he got a promotion and wants to get married. Instead, Anna flies off the handle (the nosebleeds must make her irritable), jumps to the wrong conclusion and drives angrily off in to the night.

In the rain.
Teary-eyed.
While trying to use her cell phone.
Did I mention it was raining?

Well, you don't have to be an Einstein to figure out that she gets into an accident. But not just an accident, but a fatal one and we next see Anna waking up on the slab at Deacon's funeral home. Yes, she died and she woke up. Or did she? Or is she really still alive? Or is Deacon crazy? Or did Colonel Mustard do it in the study with the candlestick? It's really just one of the many things we're expected to swallow in the horror movie cliché goulash that "After.Life" is. Written and directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo (her last feature was a little film called, "Pâté"), "After.Life" is like a book with a beautiful cover but filled with a bunch of pages from other books. Page one, the dysfunctional couple. Page two, the mysterious nosebleed. Then, the creepy kid. Then, the misunderstanding. You get the picture? It felt like the took the Big Box of Clichés and dumped it out into the script. If only they'd really managed to connect them better, it might have made for a better watching experience. Instead, it's a 95 minute movie that feels like 195 minutes.

For all the script's shortcomings though, you had fairly solid performances from the cast. Neeson's Deacon is appropriately sober, somber and just a touch crazy. Canterbury could corner the market on nerdy, creepy kids roles after this. Justin Long… he did well, but for the life of me, I can only see him reprising his role as the geek in Galaxy Quest. It's just something about his delivery. Biggest props, though, go out to Christina Ricci who not only did a great job with the material, but also spent most of this movie either dressed in very little or not at all. I can only guess that the director's European sensibilities demanded this bit of realism. As a red-blooded American male, I'm not complaining, but after a point, I leaned over to my friend and whispered, "I'm really tired of seeing her boobs."

Just goes to show you, good boobs to not a good movie make.