Here After 2024 Movie Review
Claire Hiller’s joy at her daughter Robin’s miraculous revival after a fatal accident turns to dread as she notices eerie changes, fearing something dark has followed Robin back from apparant of death.Robin is a fifteen-year-old with a great talent for the piano, who in the incipit we see performing in a picturesque Roman church, crowded with people who have come to see her performance. Claire, her mother, is affectionate and understanding towards her and seems to understand and fully support her.
Robin has chosen to stop speaking since childhood, following a tragic car accident in which her sister lost her life. But after a second accident, from which Robin miraculously emerges unharmed, she starts speaking again. Despite Clare’s initial enthusiasm, the situation soon takes a disturbing turn: the fifteen-year-old in fact begins to manifest increasingly sinister behaviors that, as time passes, make Robin unrecognizable in the eyes of her mother who will come to be convinced of a demonic possession.
As the title suggests, Here After. The Afterlife is a film that moves in the dreamlike dimension of the near-death experience. It is precisely this that, once crossed by Robin, will change her in an (apparently) irreversible way. And during the vision there is a desire to approach the theme of growth, explored through what we can read as moments of change, to faith, in religion or in the family. However, it seems that the intertwining of the two macro worlds that Salerno would like to combine never manage to speak to each other with total sincerity; rather, one has the impression of witnessing a strain that is not very smooth and with which it is difficult to enter into complete harmony. Adding further obstacles to the identification between the spectator and the story is certainly the poorly written characters. In fact, it is very difficult to empathize with them due to a cumbersome writing of the dialogues and gestures – too – outside the box.
Here After. The Afterlife also lives in the closed form of home and school interiors that are truly implausible. In the prestigious Catholic school attended by the protagonists, it is difficult to give in to the belief of a credible scenario, especially looking at the crude and uninviting photography put into play. The film barely manages to pick itself up in the finale, when Clare chooses to go all out by insinuating herself in the pre-death world frequented by her daughter. In this last practice Here After. The Afterlife actually reaches peaks of originality, when we see Clare deeply communicate with her traumas and navigate the submerged world of the unconscious. It is a pity that perhaps this segment is not enough to save a horror film, which throughout the entire viewing fails to force a solid relationship with the viewer.
