After.Life (2010)
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A woman awakens on an embalming table to find herself being prepared for burial by a funeral director who claims she is already dead.
The story
Eliot Deacon owns a funeral home and talks softly to the corpses he prepares for burial. Middle school teacher Anna Taylor meets Eliot when she attends the funeral of her piano teacher. That night, after a distressing argument with her boyfriend Paul, Anna is involved in a traffic accident. She awakens on an embalming table in the funeral home to find Eliot cutting off her clothes and telling her she has died. Eliot claims to have a gift for hearing the dead and injects Anna with a fictional drug called hydronium bromide to keep rigor mortis from setting in.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Eliot Deacon owns a funeral home and talks to corpses. After a car accident, Anna Taylor awakens on an embalming table where Eliot tells her she is dead and injects her with hydronium bromide. While Anna tries to escape, Eliot shows her a collection of photographs of those he has helped "make the transition." Anna eventually escapes and reaches her boyfriend Paul, who initially thinks it is a prank. However, after seeing her corpse-like self in a mirror, Anna begins to believe she is dead. Paul, becoming suspicious, seeks a search warrant but is denied. He learns that hydronium bromide can be used to fake death. Meanwhile, Eliot offers to teach a student named Jack his "gift." During the final preparations, Anna notices her breath on a mirror, accusing Eliot of lying. Eliot injects her again, and she falls unconscious. At the funeral, Paul places an engagement ring on her finger. Later, Paul drinks heavily and confronts Eliot, who taunts him. Anna awakens inside her casket, scratching at the lining. Paul rushes to the cemetery, where he embraces Anna. She tells him she loves him and describes the sound of Eliot's tools. Suddenly, Paul finds himself in the funeral home as Eliot prepares his body, revealing that Paul died in the car accident and Anna is truly dead.
- First release year
- 2009
- Runtime (minutes)
- 104
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- Agnieszka Wójtowicz-Vosloo
- Writers
- Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo · writer; Paul Vosloo · writer; Jakub Korolczuk · writer
- Cast and characters
- Christina Ricci · Anna Taylor; Liam Neeson · Eliot Deacon; Justin Long · Paul Coleman; Josh Charles · Tom Peterson; Celia Weston · Beatrice Taylor; Chandler Canterbury · Jack; Rosemary Murphy · Mrs. Whitehall; Shuler Hensley · Vincent Miller
- Genres
- psychological horror-thriller; psychological drama
- Themes
- mortality; death; perception of reality
- Tone and mood
- creepy; unsettling; plodding
- Premise and plot tags
- funeral home; psychological thriller; supernatural elements
- Source material / true-story basis
- original screenplay
- Content notes
- nude scenes
- Reception
- The film was not well received by critics, receiving generally unfavorable reviews for failing to sustain its atmosphere with enough twists.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 24% · review count: 55; Rotten Tomatoes · score: 4.5/10; Metacritic · score: 36/100 · review count: 21; Dread Central · score: 2.5/5; Bloody Disgusting · score: 3/5
- Production trivia
- Agnieszka Wójtowicz-Vosloo originally envisioned Naomi Watts for the female lead.; Liam Neeson accepted the role immediately after reading the script.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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