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After.Life
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Anchor Bay Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (25th September 2010). |
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The Film
 Though he’s often criticized for his twists, or even for the lack of twists, M. Night Shyamalan is a master of capturing the old “Twilight Zone” (1959-1964) or “Outer Limits” (1963-1965; 1995-2002) kernel of a great story idea and turning it into an entertaining, well told and watchable feature film. Even “The Happening” (2008). Other directors have tried to turn little gems of ideas into bigger stories, the best recent non-Shaymaylan example being “Midnight Meat Train” (2008). “After.Life” (2009) has the potential to turn that little bit of story idea into a large concept, under the helm of new director/co-writer Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo and with some strong casting of Christina Ricci, Liam Neeson and even Justin Long. Ricci plays elementary school teacher Anna Taylor who seems increasingly unhappy with her life and with some freaky visions that scare her. After visiting her childhood teacher’s funeral and nearly breaking up with her boyfriend after an argument she gets in a car accident while driving through the rain and wakes up in the funeral home run by Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) who informs her that she died and even shows her the death certificate. Meanwhile her boyfriend Paul (Justin Long) is unsure of her death and keeps looking for Anna, convinced that she isn’t really dead. Meanwhile Eliot keeps trying to convince Anna that she is dead, and he is her guide into the after life in trying to recognize how dead she was. And from this little nugget of the idea of waking up and being told you’re dead, there’s not much done with the concept. SPOILERS from here on: Even in the first few minutes Anna tells the audience that she was probably drugged and that she isn’t really dead, and then every time a clue comes in it's lingered on for so long that it becomes obvious that she was never really dead. What Shaymaylan does well, and simultaneously what he gets criticized for, is subtlty and making the twist sort of naturally emerge out of nowhere and make sense, something that Wojtowicz-Vosloo doesn’t quite understand how to do well yet, visually or in her script. I was originally hoping for Justin Long’s redemption for years of terrible iMac ads, playing the face of the Apple hipsters. He started with his small but hilarious role in the otherwise unfunny “Zack and Miri Make A Porno” (2008) and continued in “Drag Me To Hell” (2009). “After.Life” however suffers from some under-characterization and poor writing that doesn’t give him a lot of room to work with, but he does a nice job as the horror movie boyfriend again. Ricci’s character is similarly not very well fleshed out and it doesn’t seem like it’s entirely written to her strengths or Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s directing doesn’t quite push her. Neeson however always brings his A-game, and follows his plan for the film, but again there are little glimpses of things that could make the character more interesting but it just isn’t there. On the positive side however I think Wojtowicz-Vosloo has some potential as a visual director, she delivers a good color palette and sets up her shots well, it’s just that her choice of material and writing doesn’t quite seem to be there. There are some creepy moments, like watching Liam Neeson calmly cut the clothes off of Christina Ricci, that’s a little disturbing to watch. Maybe the most frustrating part is that there was potential here, both with the story idea and elements of Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s directing and cinematography by Anastas Michos, but it just doesn’t go anywhere. It’s entertaining enough to see Liam Neeson pull some good creepy guy work and Ricci and Long are good enough in the movie, but in terms of the actual horror elements the film doesn’t quite meet expectations. There’s plenty of nudity, not much gore and only a few moments that may actually creep you out. Wojtowicz-Vosloo seems to have an effective visual style and a sense for what could be a creepy product, but in the end it’s a little disappointing just how average the film turns out to be since it had some potential at the outset. Really it’s a tame conclusion for what I was hoping could be an ending on the level of a “Midnight Meat Train” (2009) that teases at some crazy idea and then takes it to its fullest. Instead “After.Life” toys with a twist, chooses the tamest and most obvious route and ends up disappointing.
Video
Presented in a 2.40:1 high definition 1080p 24/fps aspect ratio with AVC MPEG-4 encoding the film has a great crisp look while maintaining colder tones in the scenes in the body room of the mortuary and the warmer colors in the regular parts of life. The contrast is nice and everything comes through in the right measure and proportion for what it appears it should look like. Like I said, the director knows how to pull some good looking shots with some good cinematographic work that keep the film looking good, if not all that thoroughly entertaining.
Audio
The main audio track is an English PCM 5.1 uncompressed soundtrack at 48kHz/24-bit that sounds nice enough. Everything sounds of a reasonable quality and in the right proportions, it just feels like some aspects of the sound design are missing, or at least behind the visual cues that help set the mood. When Deacon is stiching up Anna there’s very subtle noises to indicate the stiching but to really give a creep out factor the sound could have been manipulated to really create the mood. All in all nice quality, but maybe a lackluster original presentation. There’s also an English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, along with English and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Unfortunately the disc doesn’t do much in the way of extras either, getting at the bare essentials with a making-of featurette, audio commentary track, theatrical trailer and bonus trailers. The audio commentary track with director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo brings in the occasional bit of commentary here and there with some serious awkward pauses and little bits of information scattered in with praise. Wojtowicz-Vosloo points out different instances of the hints that lead to the film’s conclusion, but really they seem so obvious it gets a little insulting. She talks about how proud of the movie she is and how happy she is with the final results, but in terms of detaisl she gets most of it out of the way in the first 15 or so minutes and sporatically pops in with commentary on little bits of the dynamic. “Delving Into the After Life” making-of featurette runs for 7 minutes and 59 seconds. Wojtowicz-Vosloo explains her inspirations from the movie, building from the kernel of the mortician and the woman, as well as pointing out all of the clues that she left in the film to point to the supposed twist ending. She talks about wanting to make thought provoking cinema, but it’s more of a miniature interview with the director rather than an actual making-of. The theatrical trailer runs for 2 minutes and 1 second. Bonus trailers on the disc are: - “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” runs for 1 minute and 18 seconds. - “Frozen” runs for 1 minute and 51 seconds. - “I Spit on Your Grave” runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. - “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” runs for 1 minute and 29 seconds. - “Pandorum” runs for 2 minutes and 16 seconds. - “The Crazies” runs for 2 minutes and 31 seconds.
Overall
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