Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a thriller,
drama, mystery film from 2009, titled After Life. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
Eliot Deacon, a funeral director, is preparing a body for a funeral. He gently talks to the body
before taking a picture with an analog camera. Meanwhile, Anna Taylor, a middle school teacher,
and her boyfriend Paul, a lawyer, are making love in their apartment. Anna isn’t enjoying
it and looks sad, so Paul lights up a cigarette and she jumps in the shower. While showering,
Paul and Anna start discussing their relationship. He is wondering whether she is happy. Even though
she says she is, Anna is obviously depressed and anxious. After her morning fight with Paul, Anna
goes to work. When she arrives there, she finds a little boy, Jack, being bullied by older students.
She saves him and then Jack asks her about a little chick they keep in the classroom.
He wonders whether the chick is dead, but Anna comforts him and explains that it’s only scared.
Afterward, we see Anna passively working behind the classroom desk.
She seems unhappy and deep in her thoughts. She takes pills and continues to work. Later, as she
leaves the school, Anna notices how the lights in the hallway are shutting off one by one. She gets
scared and starts running toward the door as the entire hallway quickly immerses into darkness.
Anna becomes extremely frightened, on the verge of screaming when Jack arrives and turns the lights
on. She’s happy to see him and they exit the school together. When Anna tells him she’s going
to her old piano teacher’s funeral, Jack insists she comes with her. She politely declines, saying
that such things aren’t for children. After she parts with Jack, Anna tries to take more pills,
but the box is empty so she goes to get more. In front of the pharmacy, she notices a hair
salon and paints her head red. When she arrives at the funeral, Eliot is standing near the body
and is having a conversation with his wife. Anna approaches the body and starts talking with the
woman. It turns out that the dead person is her old piano teacher. Eliot observes Anna and takes
an interest in her while Anna’s eye plays a little trick on her - as she is looking at the body,
she is surprised to see her piano teacher exhale. Anna leaves the funeral and goes
to her car while Eliot continues to creep at her through the window. That night, Anna is going on
a date with Paul, who plans to surprise her with a proposal. Before dinner, both of them agree not
to fight but to enjoy their evening. Anna notices how Paul bought an expensive bottle of wine, so
she asks whether there’s a special occasion they are celebrating. Paul then starts explaining how
his employers offered him a new position at work, so Anna starts to think he’s breaking up with her.
They get into an argument and Paul doesn’t even get the chance to propose. Angry at how things
turned out, he tells Anna she’s exactly like her mentally unstable mother. He runs after her but
she turns on her car along with metal music and starts driving into the night, while it’s raining.
Since she’s distressed, she doesn’t care that a large truck is passing next to her and instead
of trying to drive properly, she starts dialing a number on her phone. We don’t see what happens,
but Anna suddenly screams and turns the wheel. Next thing we know, she’s in the basement of
Eliot’s funeral home, lying on an embalming table with a bruise on her head, wearing a short red
dress. Eliot approaches her and starts cutting her clothes. Suddenly, she wakes up. The mysterious
funeral director then tells her that she was in a car accident and that she’s officially dead.
She doesn’t believe him so he shows her the death certificate. Anna isn’t convinced and
wants to move, but she can’t. Eliot laughingly says that everybody is in denial when they first
wake up at the autopsy table. He leaves her to rest and shuts down the lights, as Anna
convinces herself that she’s having a nightmare. While she is screaming at herself to wake up,
Paul is waking up in their bed and finds that Anna is missing. He’s wondering whether she left him
and regrets last night’s fight. Paul tries to call her but he doesn’t know that Eliot has her phone.
The answering machine turns on and Paul explains how he wants her to come to Chicago with him,
not break up. Eliot ignores the call and instead, he puts the phone in a paper bag and creepily
opens up an old cupboard filled with dozens of paper bags. Then, Eliot takes the picture he took
from Anna’s dead piano teacher. As he is attaching it to a wall filled with similar pictures,
he starts talking to the picture about Anna. Paul goes to look for his girlfriend at the school but
she isn’t there so he goes to her mother’s place. Anna’s mother tells Paul that her daughter is dead
and blames him for letting her drive in the rain. Paul is left in disbelief and tears as Anna’s
coldhearted mother says that she never liked him. Meanwhile, Anna is still convinced that she isn’t
dead and begs Eliot to let her go while he is sewing the bloody wound on her forehead. Eliot
insists that she is dead and proceeds to inject a yellowy fluid into her neck. The doorbell rings at
Eliot’s funeral home as Anna sweeps back into an unconscious state. Eliot leaves the basement and
goes to greet Anna’s mother. As Anna’s mother is sitting in front of her supposedly dead daughter,
she doesn’t shed a tear. Instead, she blames her for dying and leaving her poor mother all alone.
But, she doesn’t leave without saying her final wish. She wants Eliot to return Anna’s natural
hair color – black. Next, we see Jack cutting a newspaper article about Anna’s recent car
accident. Jack’s mother is bluntly and passively staring at a TV screen, looking dead herself.
The kid tells her she needs to pick him up from school but she doesn’t have any kind of reaction.
Meanwhile, at the funeral home, Eliot is cleaning his embalming tools upstairs while
in the basement, Anna wakes up and realizes that she can move her body. She quickly starts
checking her pulse and hitting her hand on the table, trying to feel pain and get some proof
that she’s alive. She gets up from the table and tries to dial the phone in the basement, but the
phone is already busy because Eliot is using it upstairs to confirm the details about her funeral.
Anna starts yelling for someone to let her out, but the doors are closed and there’s nobody there.
At the same time, Paul arrives at the funeral home, demanding to see Anna’s body. Eliot doesn’t
allow it as Paul technically isn’t family. As the two of them fight, Anna hears Paul’s voice
and starts yelling, but to no success as he can’t hear her. When Eliot comes back into the basement,
he finds Anna sitting on the floor. She asks about Paul, but he gives vague answers and instead,
turns the questions right back at her. He asks if she ever loved Paul and starts persuading
her that she has to let go of the living. Anna insists she’s alive, but Eliot doesn’t
give up and starts convincing her that she’s in denial. After the quarrel at the funeral home,
Paul goes to the police. Since he’s a lawyer, a lot of the policemen already know him. They allow
him to get a drink from the soda machine, but he uses the opportunity to sneak into the room where
they keep cars from accidents. He walks around the cars and tries to find Anna’s. When he does,
he sits on the driving seat and starts crying. As he notices a bloody bobblehead near the window,
he has a hallucination of Anna standing next to the car. He gets scared, but luckily a police
officer who’s his friend comes and comforts him. Paul takes the bobblehead with him and heads home.
While Paul is having a breakdown, Anna takes a knife to try to pick the basement door’s lock.
But, as she approaches the door, she sees another body in the basement the old woman Ms. Whitehall.
Anna becomes nervous and starts rethinking the situation. Seeing the dead woman, she feels deep
in her bones that she doesn’t want to be dead. As this is happening, Eliot enters the room. But
first, he adjusts the thermometer and drops the room temperature. Anna tries to kill him with the
knife she stole and like a psychopathic master manipulator, Paul dares her to drive the knife
in him. She doesn’t do it. Then Paul starts explaining how he can talk to her because he
speaks to the dead. He tells her that it’s his job to help them transition. Then, he starts
yelling at her, wondering why she insists she’s alive when she didn’t have such a special life,
to begin with. Anna becomes depressed and lays on the table. Soon, she wakes up and sees Ms.
Whitehall standing in front of her. The old woman is now dressed in black and is combing her hair,
telling Anna that she’s not ready. Suddenly, a dark metallic door opens in the corner.
When Anna arrives in front of it, she slowly puts her hand in the darkness, when suddenly another
pale hand takes her and drags her inside. The door closes and Anna finds herself in a mystical dark
world with blue lights. There, a little wounded girl emerges from the shadows and tells Anna that
she’s disappointed in her. The little girl also tells her that she’s actually her and that she
might be better off dead. This vision was only a dream as Anna returns to the embalming table
and wakes up. She angrily gets up and pushes everything off the shelves, screaming in agony.
Above the basement, Eliot is preparing flowers for Ms. Whitehall's funeral. While he is putting
in the final decorations, Jack approaches him, asking him when Anna’s funeral will be. Eliot
is intrigued by the child but leaves him be. He goes to the basement and sees everything broken.
He starts yelling at Anna, asking her why she pushed everything off the shelves. But instead
of getting answers, he finds her in a state of shock, wondering whether she’s alive or dead.
Meanwhile, Paul is in his apartment washing his face when suddenly Anna appears, naked. She turns
toward him and starts ripping her heart from the chest. Her torso is open and bleeding and as he
screams, he wakes up and notices how the doll he took from the car moves its head in his direction.
In the funeral home’s basement, Eliot brings Anna’s burial dress which her mother prepared.
Anna says she’s not ready to die yet and tries to start a conversation with Eliot. While doing so,
Anna’s actually stealing his keys. When he leaves, she tries to open up the doors from the basement.
But, soon after he leaves in his car, Eliot notices how his keys are missing.
He quickly returns to the house, right at the same time when Anna opens the front door.
She runs back to the kitchen and luckily, he doesn’t notice her. Sadly, she leaves the keys
in the door so there’s nowhere left to go since all the other doors are locked too.
Eliot doesn’t suspect she’s run away until he starts hearing noises, so he decides to
search the rooms. Meanwhile, Anna takes a knife from the kitchen and runs around the house,
hoping to find an exit. As Anna finds a telephone and tries to ring Paul, Eliot is quietly walking
through the house, trying to find her. When Paul answers the phone, Anna starts talking and asking
for help, but he thinks it’s a prank and hangs up. While she is holding the phone, Eliot finds
Anna and continues to convince her that she’s dead saying “you people you always need proof”.
He shows her the mirror where she sees how pale she is and starts thinking that she’s really dead.
While this is happening, Jack is outside and sees Anna from the window. Eliot notices this but he
smiles as he sees an opportunity to manipulate the little kid. Anna seems convinced and they soon go
down to the basement where Eliot washes her hair, removing the color, as per her mother’s wishes.
While taking care of Anna, Eliot gets a call to pick up a dead body and prepare it for a funeral.
Paul is still grieving and he goes to Anna’s school to pick up her things.
In her drawers, he finds postcards and pictures of him Anna took during a picnic. He starts crying
as the memories come rolling in his head. Furious and sad, he knocks out everything from the table.
While this is happening, Eliot and Anna are in the basement where Eliot is preparing another
dead body. He’s sewing the dead man’s mouth to keep it closed and puts plastic in the eyes.
Anna’s asking whether Paul cried when he saw her and Eliot lies saying he didn’t when in fact, Paul
didn’t even see her. She asks Eliot why do people die and he tells her that it’s because death
makes life important. Then, he injects the yellow fluid into her neck again, making her unconscious.
In school, Paul meets Jack and the little boy tells him that he saw Anna at the funeral home
wearing a red dress. Paul says that Anna didn’t have a red dress but Jack insists she saw her.
Paul loses his patience and when Jack says that maybe Paul doesn’t love her anymore, he slaps the
kid, hard. In the funeral home, the weird Eliot is looking at the pictures he takes from bodies
and starts talking to them. Suddenly, he sees a police car in front of his house and gets scared.
When the police officer arrives at the door, he asks to see the dead body. Eliot draws back like
he’s thinking of an escape plan but turns out the policeman is the new dead body’s brother.
Eliot sighs in relief and takes the policeman to the basement. While looking at his brother, the
policeman notices Anna’s body. She is unconscious, but her head slightly moves. The policeman asks
Eliot a few minutes alone with his brother and when Eliot leaves, he goes toward Anna’s body.
It seems like he suspects she’s alive, but the only thing he wanted was to touch her.
As the policeman touches Anna, Eliot reenters the basement, confused at what he just saw. The
policeman leaves and Eliot gets angry. He starts obsessively putting makeup on the dead brother,
making him look like a clown. He talks to the body but since the body is really dead, nobody replies.
Meanwhile, Jack doesn’t give up on his suspicions and visits the funeral home again. He goes toward
the new body when Eliot arrives and scares him. Eliot tells the child that the dead are drawn
to Jack because he has a gift. He tells him they both have a gift, like Lazarus who raised Jesus.
He tells Jack that the first one who spoke to him was his mother and then offers to teach the kid
how to use his gift. While driving, Paul sees a red dress, just like the one Jack described.
He remembers that Anna did have a red dress and quickly drives to the funeral home.
There, he finds Eliot pruning his bushes and insists he sees Anna. He tells him that Jack
saw her in the window, but Paul explains that the boy is a frequent visitor of the funeral home and
has a vivid imagination. Paul gets really angry and enters the house, screaming Anna’s name while
running toward the basement. Anna wakes up at that exact moment, but she doesn’t react as now,
she believes that she’s really dead. Paul leaves and goes straight to the police, demanding they
do a search of the funeral home. The police don’t take him seriously because they think he’s only
grieving. In the funeral home, Anna is on the table and Eliot is prepping her for the funeral.
She starts opening up, telling Eliot how she has regrets and wanted a different life.
Anna tells she lived in a routine and never really allowed herself to love because she learned as
a child that love can only hurt you. When Eliot asks her what would have made her life better, she
replies that she only wanted to be happy. Eliot gets angry and starts questioning her life and
her relationship with Paul. He then opens the door and tells her to leave and that she has another
chance. But Anna has a frightening hallucination and stays at the doorway, not moving a muscle.
Eliot then laughingly says, like he is proving a point, that people aren’t afraid of death, but
of life. They get back to the table where Eliot is finishing his preparations for the funeral.
Later, he goes to dig up the hole for Anna in the graveyard when Jack suddenly arrives. The kid
wants to learn from Eliot so he asks for advice. Eliot then explains his life philosophy. He says
that he has the power to see bodies which are people who are not necessarily dead but who wander
around aimlessly, making life more miserable. He tells Jack that this is his duty and that he has
no choice. The next morning, Ana is sitting in her box, waiting for the final funeral preparations.
Before receiving the injection, she ask Eliot to see herself in the mirror one more time.
He gives her the mirror and as she exhales, she sees her breath condensing on the glass.
Anna realizes that he’s been manipulating and lying right from the start.
She’s actually alive! As she protests, Eliot gives her an injection and she falls asleep.
The funeral director then takes a picture of her. At the funeral, everybody is crying,
even Anna’s mother. Paul kisses her and leaves the engagement ring on her fingers. He notices
how cold her body is and starts crying, slowly accepting that she’s really dead. Eliot doesn’t
want to risk anybody finding out the truth so he quickly closes the box. When everybody leaves,
Eliot puts Anna’s picture on the wall where there is a collection of hundreds of pictures. It’s all
the people he lied to and killed. Meanwhile, Anna gains consciousness while being buried alive.
She screams and punches the box lid but nobody can hear her. During the funeral dinner, Paul gets
really drunk and upset. He still can’t believe that Anna’s dead and confronts Eliot about it.
But instead of comforting him, Eliot dares him to check whether Anna’s alive, saying he doesn’t
have much time left. Paul quickly leaves the dinner and starts driving toward the graveyard.
At the same time, Jack puts the little chicken in a box and buries it alive, saying to the
little chick that it’s better this way. As Paul is driving recklessly and drunk to Anna’s grave, she
is yelling in the closed box and quickly losing breath. Paul notices an ambulance car behind
him but continues driving. On the same road, the funeral director waits in his car with Jack and
puts on classical music. The kid asks whether it’s over and Eliot confirms. Paul runs toward
the grave and starts digging it up. He takes Anna out of the box and kisses her. She wakes
up but Paul soon realizes that he’s dreaming. The next thing he sees is Eliot, standing above
him at the embalming table and cutting his bloody shirt. Just like he did with Anna,
he also starts convincing Paul that he’s dead. He tells him he never made it to the cemetery
because he had a car accident. As Paul protests, Jack appears and observes the entire process.
In the end, Eliot injects Paul with an embalming trocar as his new victim screams in pain.