Dead people can be such whiners

“‘You people!’” said Eliot Deacon with sadness and some irritation. He meant the dead. They were complainers. They don’t want to die yet, they have unfinished business, there is something more that they need or want, the death certificate is wrong, etc., etc., etc. The mortician has to listen to this stuff all the time.

Take Anna for example. She left a disastrous dinner with her boyfriend, was speeding on a rainy night and crashed and died. And now she’s on a porcelain slab in his prep room telling him there’s been some mistake. He tries to reason with her, he holds up the death certificate against her face and shows her the coroner’s signature but no, she’s alive as I can plainly see so what if he thinks she’s dead why does he always lock the door carefully on his way out?

After.Life is a strange movie because it never makes clear whether Anna (Christina Ricci) is alive or dead well not alive like you know it but alive like in a middle state between life and death somewhere. Her body is supposed to be dead: no pulse; we assume blood replaced by embalming fluid; can’t sit up and move around protesting arguing et cetera. Is Deacon (Liam Neeson) the only one who sees this? Could he be fantasizing? No: little boy Jack (Chandler Canterbury) sees her too through window.

Jack tells Anna’s boyfriend Paul (Justin Long). He believes it because he had such trouble accepting her death, still has engagement ring he meant to offer on fateful night et cetera et cetera so tries break into funeral home causes scene at police station sounds like madman.

After.Life is another horror movie about how you’re still alive when everybody else thinks you’re dead except that it adds what I’ve been afraid of ever since the day I first pulled down Poe from my dad’s bookshelf at a too-young age, looked over the Table of Contents and turned straight to ‘The Premature Burial.’ She was still alive when dirt started thudding on coffin but from Deacon’s point of view? I think so.

But ours? According director Agnieszka Wojtowicz Vosloo audiences divide about half and half. Me, too. Half of me clings desperately to life after death; other half notes how film diabolically undercuts every sign that she might still be alive though I can’t help but think this is a horror movie where Anna just happens to be undead yet doesn’t know it.

Neeson’s performance as Deacon is hard to pin down but never less than sincere. He has been dealing with these people for years. He says he has “the gift” of being able to talk to them and little Jack, who sees her? But then again, Deacon thinks he has the gift, too. So you don’t know what to believe. Maybe the gift is supernatural; maybe it’s madness or delusion.

The movie exhibits several classical scenes of horror movies that are set in a morgue. The chilling stainless-steel equipment. Working late at night. A graveyard under the moonlight. A burial. An Opened Grave. Even her fingernails desperately tearing through the coffin’s lining though we only see that from Anna’s POV, not anyone else’s.

I think the film cheats itself a bit by refusing to come down on one side or the other; as it is, it can only be a framework for horror situations and nothing more. Yes, we can argue about this forever but pointlessly, because there isn’t an answer. We can enjoy the suspense of some of its opening scenes, and some of its drama too. The performances are fine given the material they’re being asked to serve. But once we reach a point where we realize that everything about the reality of this film is problematical, there starts to be a certain impatience with it as if our chain were being yanked.

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