AFTER.LIFE (2010) (**)

This is a thriller that tries to keep us guessing. The central premise is whether the main character is alive or actually dead. The problem with this scenario is that the story can't hold it up for the length of the film. We feel like we're being jerked around in order to keep the secret going.

Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci, MERMAIDS) is this character in limbo. She's been suffering from depression, which makes her mood erratic. She gets in a fight with her boyfriend Paul Coleman (Justin Long, HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU) where she speeds off in her car. Consumed with emotion, she gets in a car accident. When she wakes, she's on the table at a funeral parlor. The director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson, SCHINDLER'S LIST) tells her she is dead, but just doesn't know it yet.

Anna doesn't believe him and she attempts to escape. But there is Deacon ready to stop her and convince her that she is not alive. Meanwhile, Paul is having a hard time coping with the loss of the woman he planned to marry. Anna was a teacher and her student Jack (Chandler Canterbury, KNOWING) catches a glimpse of her at the funeral parlor. But did he really see her or did he see her ghost?

This is the question that we are asked over and over and over again. To the film's benefit Neeson is convincing as Deacon. He's the most interesting character, because we wonder what his motivation is. If Anna is dead, he is a force for good helping the dead in their transition to the afterlife. If Anna is not dead, he's a sick bastard. We're not really sure one way or the other until the end.

But that's it, when we get to the end, we feel like we've been had. There were too many coincidences and contrivances to make us believe one way or the other. A thriller that presents a yes or no answer as its main tension creator has a hard time holding an audience until the very end. I thought of another completely different 2010 thriller when thinking about this issue. Angelina Jolie's SALT presents a yes or no question at its core -- is Salt a Russian agent or not? The film answers that question about half way in and by doing so spirals off a dozen more questions afterward, which makes the film so compelling.

There are some additional questions we want answered in AFTER.LIFE, but they're not about the main character as is the case in SALT. Here we have questions about Deacon. At the half way point of this film, Anna virtually becomes an inactive protagonist; Paul starts to play a more active role in moving the story forward. Because of this the film loses the steam it needs to keep the audience engaged in rooting for Anna.

When the film closes, I was left feeling "that was it?" I was hoping for more but got exactly what I expected and that's not really good in a thriller. Reflecting back the film felt like its only real appeal was for those with a fetish for staged crime scene photos or Christina Ricci. That might be appealing for some, but what does it say about your film's story when all people can remember about your film was that Wednesday Addams was naked throughout?