AFTER.LIFE 3/4
Anchor Bay Films, Rated R
Directed and co-written by first-time feature filmmaker Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, After.Life seems to delve into everything you may or may not have wanted to know about what exactly takes place in your local funeral home’s underground mortuary while preparing the recently deceased for burial. For some viewers, that may not be their cup of embalming fluid.
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Christina Ricci, following her release from a difference sort of captivity in Black Snake Moan and no stranger to goth turns in movies ever since her early days as Wednesday in The Addams Family, plays Anna. She’s a temperamental small town schoolteacher involved in a fading relationship with long time boyfriend Paul (Justin Long). Prior to her sudden death in a car crash, Anna experiences a few morbidly prophetic fatal hints of what is about to happen, including nosebleeds in the shower and an impulse to dye her hair bright red, a frightening hue which spills over into the beauty salon sink like blood pouring from her head.
Christina Ricci stars in After.Life
When Anna’s freshly departed corpse arrives at the funeral home of weirdly meticulous mortician Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson), she still seems very much alive and argues with him to release her from mortuary captivity. But Deacon, whose bedroom walls are covered with snapshots of all his affectionately prepared postmortem customers, assures Anna that she’s quite dead and simply in the usual cadaver denial.
Not your typical horror movie, After.Life is an artsy shocker that is more into kooky character depth than carnage, along with some head turning, as Ricci’s corpse parades seductively around the funeral home flaunting a skimpy red satin slip, when not totally nude.
Rarely has a screen relationship conjured such subdued spine-tingling revulsion, pitting Anna’s funeral parlor undead anger management issues against an attentive gross-out mortician who provides service with a leering smile while cheerfully delivering the slogan “It’s my pleasure,” while also doing time as purgatory bartender, hearing tales of lifetime regrets and second thoughts. In any case, After.Life should serve as an effective deterrent, to anyone contemplating suicide any time soon in the audience.
