‘Here After’ a unique ghost story about finding love after death
Dying doesn’t mean you can’t still fall in love. In many cases throughout pop culture, it’s the catalyst for finding one’s soulmate.
Take “Here After,” a film from writer-director and Butler native Harry Greenberger that premiered Friday via video on demand. Its rules dictate that the dead can’t move on until they find true love with another kindred spirit. It’s an unfair system that serves as a fascinating satire of modern dating and how far some will go to find that special someone and hold onto them.
With its impressive production values on a relatively low budget and cast of well-known character actors, “Here After” isn’t the kind of movie that is usually made immediately available on VOD. Don’t hold that against it, though, as it wasn’t dumped immediately onto iTunes, Google Play and the like because of any structural deficiencies.
While “Here After” doesn’t boast the most airtight narrative in terms of how the world operates, the film is mostly a pleasant dramedy featuring some solid performances and a unique take on the importance of forming and maintaining relationships — even from beyond the grave.
Michael (Andy Karl) is surprised and disoriented to end up in the otherworldly office of Scarlett (Christina Ricci) after he dies in a car accident. Scarlett tries explaining to him that souls only pass through in pairs, and, in order to leave this cosmic way station, he must seek out a real reciprocated love connection. And as he later finds out, he’ll disappear forever if he can’t do that in an unspecified amount of time.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy who recently suffered a bad breakup. Michael begins
roaming a New York City where the dead can see everyone but the living have no idea how close they are to what are essentially ghosts. On his journey to the other side, he reconnects with his old friend, Angelo (Michael Rispoli), and makes the acquaintance of Honey Bee (Nora Arnezeder), who further complicates his goal of escaping purgatory before his time runs out.
“Here After” is basically what “The Good Place” may have looked like if Eleanor needed to fall in love with Chidi to reach that show’s heaven-like paradise. It’s not as light in tone as the late NBC sitcom, though it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Michael’s desperate quest for love has an urgency reminiscent of how “Black Mirror” treated Yorkie and Kelly’s similar afterlife courtship in its famous “San Junipero” episode.
As protagonists with a singular goal go, Michael is tough to root for at first. He’s a bit of a jerk, which multiple dead women spell out for him as he begins attempting to search for his soul’s perfect match. By the end, though, Michael has softened and learned how to be there for someone.
Credit Karl for taking a character from such an unlikable place to one where he’s genuinely worth cheering on. The rest of the cast do their jobs in selling this adjacent reality scenario, especially “The Sopranos” veteran Rispoli as Michael’s beleaguered confidant and “Army of the Dead” star Arnezeder as a witty, playful foil for Michael’s awkward bravado.
Ricci nearly steals the show as a cosmic bureaucrat who butts heads with Michael about how this afterlife system works. Her giant eyes express everything from pity to exasperation with Michael’s situation, and it’s a reminder of how much fun Ricci can be in movies when used correctly.
As a director, Greenberger points his camera at a version of New York City that goes from desolate to even more densely populated than its living residents know as Michael learns how to handle his new circumstances. Showing the city from a dead man’s perspective creates some “Ghost”-like situations that either make for amusing comedy or somber reflections on how cruel the living can be to both the dead and those still around them.
If there’s one major issue with “Here After,” it’s the implications of its premise. There is one mention of what happens to, say, children who die while obviously still single, but that gets hand-waved as if to tell audiences, “Don’t overthink this.” Questions of that nature don’t arise too often, but during slower moments when the illusion breaks, it’s hard not to poke holes in the laws that govern the film’s logic.
It’s not a crippling flaw, and “Here After” is sweet enough at its core to stave off the cynicism some of its more outlandish elements may engender. Try to stay locked in to Michael’s pursuit of true love and immerse yourself in this betterthan-usual VOD offering’s trippy version of the afterlife.