After.Life (2009)

Certificate: 15. Duration: 104 minutes. Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery.
Director/Co-Writer: Agnieszka Wojitowicz-Vosloo. Starring: Christina Ricci, Liam Neeson, Justin Long, Chandler Canterbury.



So this amazing film is apparently a horror, though I don't find it at all scary. I think it would be more suited to the thriller genre. Anyway, for this film, I'll be including some spoilers in my review. This film is so exciting, confusing and just so satisfying. The graphic quality is so cool and I like the opening scene a lot. I think it has a great ending, too, which is one thing not many great films have.


So Christina Ricci plays the lead role as Anna Taylor: a depressed woman living with her loyal and kind boyfriend, Paul Coleman (played by Justin Long), and she takesoverdoses of pills. Basically, the undertaker (Liam Neeson) targets people who aren't really living their lives, who aren't using life properly and he has targeted Anna to 'end her life'. After an argument at a dinner that Paul meant to propose in, Anna drove away, in a state of anger, and ended up in a car accident that supposedly killed her.

Anna wakes up in the undertaker's basement, body solid stiff on a metal table. The undertaker tries to convince her of her 'death' by showing her medical records, saying he is the only one who can see her as she is and injecting a drug, similar to the fluid used in Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet', that causes complete paralysis, even of the heart. The undertaker keeps on twisting Anna's mind until she accepts that she is 'dead'. It is when she finally accepts her death that we know she is alive. The undertaker, Eliot Deacon, gets her to look in a mirror on the top floor of the house where Anna has run to, but she gets to close and exhales as she closes her eyes and turns away from the mirror, leaving condensed water vapour from her breath on the mirror. Eliot sees this and quickly wipes it away before Anna notices. Outside the house, Jack (Chandler Canterbury), one of Anna's students (she works as a teacher), sees her in the upstairs window, then leaves, confused by what he has been told and what he has just seen.

Paul is struggling to cope with his girlfriend's death and when he goes to collect Anna's things from the school she worked in, he comes across Jack who tells him about what he saw in the window of the undertaker's house. Paul is infuriated that a child would tell him 'lies' about his own girlfriend and hits Jack. Later on, Paul reflects on what Jack said and starts to believe him, so he decides to go to Eliot and demand to see Anna, but Eliot says viewings are for family members only. Paul storms into the house and down to basement Jack talks with Eliot after someone's funeral and Eliot explains to him that 'he has a gift', that 'he can see the dead'. Which, of course, he can't, but Eliot can't give up the jig, as it were. Near the end of the film, after Anna's funeral, she is effectively buried alive until she runs out of oxygen. Paul dreams of this and of saving her and goes to the undertaker to confront him. The undertaker suggests going to save Anna, just like in his dream, knowing it will cause an accident in the unstable emotional state Paul is currently in. Paul's car crashes and the film ends with both the undertaker and Jack standing over 'Paul's body' on the metal table in the basement, telling him that he's dead, which, of course, he's not.


This film is an amazing film, and I now own it on DVD after I spotted it in an oxfam shop xD Yay! Go see it. Now.

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So, that was my review/summary of the film 'After.Life' which I wrote for my school's newspaper a little while ago, like my review of 'The Host'. It's a weird one, but I'm still improving (I still ain't got the hang of the whole review content formatting...) So yeah! Hope no-one got too bored, as it's quite long

Laters, dudes! ;D

The Host (2013)

Certificate:12A. Duration: 125 minutes. Genre: Sci-fi, Fantasy, Suspense, Thriller.

Director/Writer: Andrew Niccol. Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel.

I haven't read the book (by Stephanie Meyer), but the film, I think, was brilliant. Saoirse Ronan is an absolutely stunning actress. She's pretty too. The film's ending and trailer song, Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, is so amazing; I love it. My friends and I, when we went to see the film, practically screamed the song out at the end of the end of the movie, haha.

I will now attempt to compose a concise, spoiler-free summary of the film in the following paragraphs:

In a future time on Earth the human race has been invaded by an alien species who aim to better life on Earth for humanity. They are a peaceful race who work extremely well with one another, they don't use things like money and they help each other unconditionally as we later find out. This species, it is implied, have inhabited other planets and taken over their respective life forms to act in order to, perhaps, save their (dire/destructive/conflicting) situation or another reason unbeknownst to myself.

The main character, Melanie Stryder is taken over by an alien, Wanderer (later nicknamed Wanda), in the hope that Melanie's memories will be of use to the aliens in leading them to the Resistance (what they believe to be a majority of the last remaining humans), and they continue with, effectively, 2 minds in the same body. Wanda finds out about Melanie's past, including her younger brother, Jamie, and her lover, Jared Howe.

An alien is inserted into a human via slitting the back of their neck open and then taking out a white, glowing thing that looks like a see picture 1 out of a 3-dimensional metallic ovally thingy and holding it out to the cut in the neck. It kind of crawls in without managing to look creepy and insect-like.

But when one corrupted alien Seeker is determined to hunt down one of her own species who has sided with the humans, both species realise the other isn't so difficult to live with. It was just the idea of invasion and rebellion locking into place, fears long lived of both races. An important quote that makes you think, that I liked and that stands out for me, is from a conversation between Jared and Ian, J:"It's not human." I:"So we stop acting human?" This quote is also in the trailer and I think it just makes people stop and think about what they're doing and why, because it really is pointless. I like this film because it highlights the faults and dangers of what our lives now, of what society now, can lead us to do and believe.

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So, that was my film review of 'The Host' which I wrote for my school's newspaper a while back. It's a weird one, but I'm still improving (I still ain't got the hang of the whole review content formatting...) So yeah! Hope no-one got too bored, but is quite short, so.

Laters, dudes ;P