Movies
After.Life (limited)
“Naked, naked, naked. Does that simple fact alone make After.Life worth watching? Perhaps, but it all comes down to your own personal stance on all things Ricci. I, for one, am a proud convert. Which is the only reason this movie earns three skulls.”
Is there any phrase in the English language more giddily enticing than “a nude Ricci”? The promise of Riccian nudity is a compelling force (as in, I was just compelled to blow a load in my pants), but personal preference must also be a factor. Do you like your topless Christina Ricci served up Black Snake Moan-style, all nubile and smoking hot, totally ready to jump on some redneck boy? Or do you prefer the pasty, corpse-lookin’ Ricci of After.Life, always despondent and frequently splayed out nude on a bare white slab or perhaps underneath (gag!) boyfriend Justin Long? Maybe one day Ricci’s resume will include a nude scene for every male demographic in existence, but for now the hillbillies and necrophiliacs will just have to do.
In After.Life, Ricci does her usual wide-eyed, ethereal bit as a schoolteacher stuck in a listless marriage to lawyer Justin Long. After a car accident that must have been too expensive to make it on screen, Ricci wakes up on a slab in a funeral home, with funeral director Liam Neeson preparing her body for burial. A panicked Ricci insists that she’s not dead, but Neeson informs her otherwise. He claims to have the ability to speak to souls stuck between this life and the next one; it’s his job to make sure that Ricci is able to cope with her own death prior to her burial.
A plodding reflection on mortality disguised as a psychological thriller (at least until it throws off its sheep’s clothing in a final, somewhat redeeming twist), After.Life strains for artificial suspense with manipulative sound cues and obnoxious soundtrack swells, but it all smacks of so much horror-posing bullshit. Neeson is never threatening, and Ricci says she can’t feel any pain, even as he prepares her body for burial. There’s no tension without a genuine threat.
As Ricci argues endlessly with Neeson about her own demise, a couple of negligible subplots hog a bunch of screen time. Justin Long grieves strenuously enough to cement his status as Hollywood’s bottom bitch, while weird kid Jack is a staring, understandably bullied 11-year-old student who thinks he can communicate with the dead like Liam Neeson. But hey, there’s only one Liam Neeson. In any case, it feels like padding.
Which (somehow) brings me back to naked Ricci. There’s no arguing that fans get an eyeful with After.Life. Ricci appears naked while chatting up Liam Neeson, naked while posing seductively on an embalming table, naked while talking to Neeson a little more, naked while tearing her own heart out in a dream sequence, and then naked again while talking to Neeson. Naked, naked, naked. Does that simple fact alone make After.Life worth watching? Perhaps, but it all comes down to your own personal stance on all things Ricci. I, for one, am a proud convert. Which is the only reason this movie earns three skulls.
From director Sébastien Vaniček, Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters July 10, but that’s just one of two brand new Evil Dead movies releasing in the next two years.
Evil Dead Wrath recently wrapped production, with the upcoming film from director Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set for theatrical release on April 7, 2028.
We’ve known virtually nothing about the movie up to this point, but a recent interview with producer Rob Tapert has surfaced this week (thanks, Dread Central) and it reveals a very surprising bit of information about Evil Dead Wrath. The film is set in 1972!!
Tapert told the students at Michigan State University during a chat, “Evil Dead Wrath is yet another great departure. It predates everything. It takes place in 1972.”
That means Evil Dead Wrath takes place even before the arrival of Ash Williams and friends to that infamous cabin in the woods, which should give the film a whole new kind of flavor.
Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness was of course set in the Middle Ages, but Evil Dead Wrath will take place chronologically before Ash Williams was transported into medieval times!
“It will feel like a 1972 movie because the director and his DP want to imitate the film’s look and feel of something that’s called Ektachrome 100, which was a film stock,” Tapert notes. “Still available. A lot of movies shot on back then. And so it’s very warm, very tungsten.”
Tapert calls Wrath “very Tarantino-esque, very deliberate. [Galluppi] made a movie, not a horror movie, that I liked a great deal called Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s worth looking up.”
The Last Stop in Yuma County, it’s interesting to note, is also set in the 1970s!
Charlotte Hope (The Nun), Jessica McNamee (Mortal Kombat), Zach Gilford (“Midnight Mass”), Josh Helman (Mad Max: Fury Road), Ella Newton (Dangerous Animals), Elizabeth Cullen (Diabolic), and Ella Oliphant will star in Evil Dead Wrath.
Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi and franchise producer Rob Tapert are producing. Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin will executive produce alongside Romel Adam and Jose Canas.