Here After

by Mike McGranaghan

Here After has a finale that’s emotional, beautiful, and spiritual. Unfortunately, you have to slog through 75 dull minutes to get to it. I have no doubt the film was made with only the best of intentions. That doesn’t change the fact that the story relies on exhausted cliches and narrative shortcuts to reach its destination.

Claire Hiller (Connie Britton) is an American teaching at a high school in Italy. Her selectively mute teenage daughter Robin (Freya Hannan-Mills) is a talented pianist seeking entry into an esteemed music conservatory. That plan is halted after she’s injured in an accident, leaving her clinically dead for 20 minutes. Against all odds, Robin doesn’t die. She does, however, experience an abrupt personality change, going from an upbeat girl to a brooding, volatile menace.

The idea of a creepy child or adolescent is nothing new. In movies ranging from Pet Sematary to There’s Something Wrong with the Children to Exorcist: Believer, we’ve been treated to young people who undergo a scary behavioral/attitudinal shift as a result of a paranormal phenomenon. Here After goes for the same-old same-old, having Robin become uncharacteristically defiant of her mother and prone to outbursts of sudden aggression. She’s a barely defined character to begin with, so the transformation lacks a punch.

A story like this always requires the revelation of a dark secret. Claire has one. Lest you think the film will be about the impact of a near-death experience, Sarah Conradt’s screenplay throws in the requisite third-act twist where we learn that a traumatic event from Claire’s past is directly responsible for what’s happening to Robin. You probably don’t need me to tell you what she must do in order to rectify the situation.

That brings us to the ending. As corny as it is in some respects, director Robert Salerno and cinematographer Bartosz Nalazek (What Happens Later) shoot it gorgeously. The stylized, dreamlike sequence is aided by Connie Britton’s emotional performance. She’s good throughout, but the finale really lets her shine. It’s the one point in the film where you actually feel something. The conclusion has a poignant quality lacking everywhere else.

For whatever positive or negative qualities it has, Here After is a relentlessly downbeat movie. Trying to say something meaningful about death is hard because nobody wants to think about the subject. A lack of originality combines with a heartbreaking climax to send viewers away more depressed than enlightened.

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