After.Life

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The criss-crossing between drama, thriller, and horror is nothing if not arresting. It is also unsettling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

We can enjoy the suspense of the opening scenes, and some of the drama. The performances are in keeping with the material. But toward the end, when we realize that the entire reality of the film is problematical, there is a certain impatience. It's as if our chain is being yanked.

Variety Brian Lowry

The potent imagery never meshes with narrative logic in Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's first feature, promising more than it can deliver.

Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz

Neeson's performance is so eerie, in a buttoned-down sort of way.

Time Out New York Keith Uhlich

This is one case where there’s more life in the morgue than out.

NPR Ian Buckwalter

It dresses up boilerplate horror in a classy shell, yet never gives it the pulse it needs.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

I don't think we're expected to take After.Life any more seriously than Ricci's last extended (near) nude role in the immortal "Black Snake Moan." That one was more fun.

Boxoffice Magazine Mark Keizer

Neeson’s austere, meticulous turn is the best reason to see After.Life. He’s cinema’s most soft-spoken, high-toned boogeyman since Anthony Hopkins opened his first can of fava beans.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Whether or not she's alive is the question that's supposed to animate this ostensibly metaphysical horror movie, but thematic rigor mortis sets in long before the final reel.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Clean, precise and terribly sullen, After.Life is like its female protagonist. It feels stuck between worlds, or genres.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Caught in a pretentious no-man’s land between horror and melodrama.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Requires Neeson to stare coldly and talk to corpses, but Ricci has the greater dramatic challenge: She has to operate, unfazed, in close-up nakedness much of the time.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The only thing worse than bad horror is pretentiously bad horror. From title to finish, After.Life takes itself far more seriously than you will.

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

One hates to say it, but after this and "Black Snake Moan," it might be time for the talented actress (Ricci) to keep her clothes on.

Village Voice Nicolas Rapold

Somewhere in Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's awkward debut feature is a macabre and almost quaint Gothic mystery begging to be left alone.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Icky, nasty, calculatingly odd and a little funny, though more often strained and inadvertently absurd, After.Life changes its mood and apparent intentions from scene to scene, sometimes minute to minute.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

So many horror conventions are at work in After.Life that either the filmmakers are parodying them or couldn't come up with anything better. I'm betting on the second choice.

New York Observer Rex Reed

After.Life, with a pretentious point between the two words in the title for no explainable reason, is a horror film with a macabre style but few of the creepy chills of cheaper, cliché-riddled thrillers that are a dime a dozen these days.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A movie as annoying as its oddly punctuated title, After.Life is a misguided and empty-headed attempt at psychological horror that succeeds only at talking the viewer to death.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The dialogue is clumsy, the tone swings between somber and silly and the whole bizarre venture eventually succumbs to rigor mortis.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

The afterlife is not, however, nearly as deadly or as ghastly as the movie itself, an undertaking so tortured that it digs a deeper grave with every passing scene.