the audience applauded

A Major Disappointment

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

On the surface, "Hereafter" is as much about the afterlife as "Ghost", "Flatliners" or "The Sixth Sense" but it's a Clint Eastwood movie so its approach to its central theme is less in the realm of supernatural spectacle than meditative contemplation. Yet for all its commendable pretension to be a meaningful existential drama, the film delivers less than the aforementioned movies... but it still got praises!I actually read some positive critics, and I was surprised by Roger Ebert's reception ... surprised to a limit, because it was a few months before "The Tree of Life" came out and became one of his ultimate favorite movies, so my guess is that it takes one's soul approaching its own mortality (Ebert or Eastwood) to reach a capability to embrace the material. I'm questioning my mortality all right but maybe I'm young enough to miss the film's beauty or alive enough to spot some flaws. "Hereafter" consists of three stories told separately. The first involves Cecile de France as Marie, a French survivor of the Tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in 2004. The second story is about Marcus (Frankie/George McLaren), an English preteen who loses his twin brother and tries to "contact" him. And the third protagonist is George, Matt Damon as a medium who can see your dead relatives through simple hand contact. His psychic abilities resulting from a childhood's concussion have poisoned his life and made him reject the one thing making him special, like Chris Walken in "The Dead Zone". To be fair, all these stories had strong potentials when taken separately, the problem is that they cancel each other. Marie lived a near-death experience and while she can share her experience with friends or family members capable of empathy, we only see her handling her post-traumatic experience with her colleagues and her detached lover played by Thierry Neuvic. So naturally, she encounters misunderstanding and is awkwardly surprised about the hostility. The way I see it, either she's going through an emotional phase... and then shouldn't be surprised about the lack of enthusiasm from people whose relationships are strictly professional, or she believes in her story in a more opportunistic fashion. Either ways, there's something rather confusing about her motivation. When she decides to write a book, it's handled as an end rather than a mean, she doesn't even talk with people who lived similar experiences, she only takes some notes from a doctor who worked at palliative care and just in time before the movie closes, she gets invited to the book fair. I get that the film is more interested in the 'living' matters and won't try to make a philosophical statement about her vision of the afterlife, but it wasn't really effective in turning Marie into some sort of whistleblower or heroic crusader. Marcus' story had the most enthralling premise but some shadow of mystery would have fitted it better. Marcus can't talk to his deceased brother Jason "obviously" but we know there's one person who can help him so it's a matter of time before the two stories tie together. There's nothing wrong with predictability but there's something slightly disappointing when the viewer is one step ahead of the characters, when he knows where it's all heading to. We know Marcus will easily slip through his foster parents' attention, we know all the attempts to reach his brother will fail, and when they did, I was really cringing at how phony some mediums were... for a movie meant to feel real.Now, regarding George, the film makes us believe in an afterlife or at least an existing frontier between life and death, which is well rendered in the opening sequences (although one can interpret them as hallucinatory visions). For all we know, maybe George only reads in people's minds. But there's no doubt that he's got a gift and he considers it a curse. Still, the film is unconsciously manipulative in the treatment of George when it's not the result of pure lazy screenwriting. For instance, everything we should learn about him is given to us on the nose by his brother at the most convenient time, but the reason we give credit to George's predicament is because it ruins a promising relationship with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard).Seriously, what were the odds of having a love at first sight with a woman who had a troubled past, and involving a dead person at that? Why wouldn't George help a woman to talk to her deceased son if it can bring some comfort, especially since he accepted to help the kid? Everything seems driven by the evolving requirement of the plot but never leaves much to empathize with or simply understand, the script turns the universal theme of the afterlife or its intellectual or emotional quest to a McGuffin leading to a sappy sentimental conclusion.There was room for some daring take on the subject, like Peter Weir's "Fearless", and God knows that Clint Eastwood is an expert when it comes to make meaningful and poignant movies but his stories have always dealt with active characters, who fulfilled some achievements. In "Hereafter", the areas of achievement are left unclear or unrevealed so that even the best scenes are drowned in a sort of existential bouillabaisse and one of rather bland taste.If the film was a spectacular as its opening, as powerful as that moment where Melanie burst into tears, the ending could have been an emotional knockout. But the film deals with contrived coincidences, and each good scene is the result of a set-up made of lackluster uninspired moments so unworthy of Eastwood; even when it's slow, it's not Eastwood slow, it's so slow it made me mentally contemplate so many possible visions of an afterlife I almost reached the nirvana of boredom.

It gets boring sluggish to the point where you wait for it to get over. First few minutes make you sit to watch the movie and knowing about the starcast and director it seems fair enough. i mean its a movie that you will forget and it doesn't seem to shake you at any level whatsoever, iguess the reason could be that-there isnt not so much of a story so it should have been the screenplay and acting kind of things that should have been exceptionally impactful, but sadly i would say most of the time none of the cast seemed convincing enough..... I mean there is a way to handle these type of plots and eastwood has lost it. And i was reading some reviewrs about the psychic thing. i think that there can be movies which can make you believe in or lets say digest in psychics or after death experiences even if u have different opinion, but this movie is not one of them.

I was hoping for a movie about the HEREAFTER...........this movie BARELY even touches on that. Very disappointing. I wasted a part of an afternoon to watch this. I don't have much time to do that, and I wasted the time I had on this. So, have to write some more in order for this review to be posted. BAD BAD BAD BAD movie

I bought a DVD of 'Hereafter' many months ago, as a friend had mentioned to me one day that he had enjoyed watching it in a local Pattaya cinema. To be honest, the title put me off, and I assumed that it was yet another one of those 'spiritual' type stories where people in this world are contacted by or guided by someone in the after-life, along the lines of 'Ghost' (which to be fair was a pretty good movie but is now quite dated), 'What Dreams May Come', 'City of Angels' and so on. Frankly this story line has been done to death and I grow weary of movie producers who insist on regurgitating the same old story lines, rather than give their audiences something original to get their teeth stuck into.Anyway, it was bothering me in my list of 'UNSEEN MOVIES' so I decided to give it a go. I should have known better, as it was produced by that genius of a film director, Clint Eastwood. Who would ever believe that a 'corny' macho, deadpan cowboy actor would transform himself into one of Hollywood's finest ever filmmakers? For me, he has never made a bad movie, from Bridges of Madison County, to 'Mystic River' and the wonderful 'Gran Torino' and of course, he has already received several Oscars, most notably for 'Million Dollar Baby'.'Hereafter' is a great movie, all the more so because almost everyone connected with this movie - from the writers to the director to the actors - has publicly stated that they do not believe in the afterlife. The story is beautifully played out, by a tour de force of actors – especially the two French actors, (Cécile De France and Thierry Neuvic), and Matt Damon in quite possibly his finest role ever. This is not an action or a fantasy movie in the traditional sense, although the horrific opening footage of a tsunami which devastated a South Pacific Resort is truly riveting. It is a beautifully understated, introspective film which explores the characters and lives of the three principal players, who come from totally different walks of life and from different parts of the world: San Francisco, Paris, and London. It is the clever tale of how they became drawn to each other by their varying needs to connect, (or to 'disconnect' in the case of one of them), with the so-called 'hereafter'.It is a well-crafted film and you can't help rooting for these somewhat flawed 'heroes'. The subject matter is dealt with in a manner that neither promotes nor disparages the notion that there is something there in the next life. In the end, we are left to our own deliberations.Yet another masterpiece from Eastwood.The film cost an incredible 50 Million dollars to make, which although the cost is about par for this kind of major Hollywood blockbuster boasting a 'name' actor and director, it does seem to make you wonder where all the money went, other than in the pockets of the people making it.