After.Life

After.Life is a 2009 American psychological horror-thriller film directed by Agnieszka Wójtowicz-Vosloo from her original screenplay. It stars Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Long. Plot Eliot Deacon owns a funeral home and talks softly to the corpses he prepares for burial. Middle school teacher Anna Taylor attends the funeral of her piano teacher where she meets Eliot. That night Anna argues with her boyfriend Paul at a restaurant. She drives off in a state of distress, and has a traffic accident. She awakens on an embalming table in the funeral home to find the funeral director, Eliot, cutting off her clothes and telling her she has died. He tells Anna he has a gift and that he can hear the dead. Eliot has a collection of photographs of corpses whom he has helped "make the transition". Eliot injects Anna regularly with a fictional drug called hydronium bromide to "relax the muscles and keep rigor mortis from setting in." Paul asks to see Anna's body but Eliot does not allow it on the grounds he is not family. Anna unsuccessfully attempts to escape several times. Eliot tells her she must let go of life as she had not really been living anyway. Eventually, Anna escapes and finds a room with a phone where she reaches Paul, who hangs up thinking it's a prank. Anna comes to believe she has actually died when Eliot lets her see her corpse-like self in a mirror. One of Anna's students sees her and alerts Paul, who begins to suspect she is still alive. Anna's student Jack visits the funeral home and Eliot tells him that they share a gift, the same as Jesus, who raised Lazarus, and he offers to teach the boy more. The boy accepts and is later seen burying a living chick in a box.