Here After Review
Here After (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Robert Salerno, written by Sarah Conradt, and starring Connie Britton, Freya Hannan-Mills, Giovanni Cirfiera, Tommaso Basili, Alessandro Riceci, and Andrea Bruschi.
You know that meme where the three different Spidermen are pointing at each other? Well, that’s the image that comes to mind when I look for whom to heap blame regarding why this film was so dull. Where to begin? It’s like trying to debate which was worse, World War I or II. Pardon the hyperbolic statement, but I’m feeling vengeful after my viewing of Here After. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill snoozefest that you’d regrettably select while doom scrolling the two dozen streaming platforms; this one was special. A misfire on every level, from the script to the cinematography to the acting and sleep-inducing musical score. Here After is a PG-13 film that has all the bite of a newborn baby and had me whining like one by the end of the film too.
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Here After opens with a classical piano concert performed by Robin Hiller (Freya Hannan-Mills) as her mother, Claire (a comatose Connie Britton) watches on. After the concert, we learn that Robin is mute and communicates with sign language. While an interesting choice, it kills any momentum the early part of the film would have by having Connie Britton deliver brutal dialogue to a silent partner. Silence is going to be an ongoing issue with the picture. Several days later (I think) Robin is involved in a serious car accident where she is legally dead for 20 minutes before coming back to life. Miracles do exist!
After her resurrection, though, Robin begins acting differently (for one thing, she talks again). Another miracle! This is where the crux of the story lies, and it’s a familiar one. Someone had died long enough to bring something from the other side back with them. It’s not so much the plot that hampers the film, but more the butchered execution of how it’s told. What begins as a somewhat supernatural thriller turns into a grief-ridden trauma story that unloads a ton of exposition at the end of the film to connect all the dots. By that time you have either slumped far enough in your seat that you’re on the floor or you picked your cellphone up to distract you.
Going back to the issue of silence. The sound design and score were poorly mixed throughout the entire film. It remained quiet or downright silent the entire time, with no musical cues or score to help flesh out the bland images on screen. A bone to throw our senses so they don’t completely atrophy during this 90-minute travesty of a film. Instead, we are left with weak classical music (that I’m convinced is the band-aid that weak productions use to feel more prestigious) and other droning that adds nothing to the finished product. The musical phenomenon, Robin Hiller, would not have been happy!
This next part might not be easy to talk about. Look, I like Connie Britton. Sincerely. There is an authentic motherly quality to her work that can really work on screen (especially in television). The problem here is she can’t rise above this material. Some of her line deliveries are the roughest that I’d ever seen on screen. No spoilers, of course, but there is a scene where she is crying and hysterical toward the end, but she delivers all her dialogue in a whisper. I was actually laughing at the screen during her breakdown. “Cringe-worthy,” as the kids are saying today. Also, for some reason the film takes place in Italy, and there is a constant barrage of half-Italian, half-English dialogue that gets twisted in the tongues of the actors and butchered on delivery.
Never After is a film that falls flat in every aspect of filmmaking and commits perhaps the worst sin a piece of art can do: bore you.
Rating: 2/10
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