Anna (Christina Ricci) has a good job as a school teacher and a caring boyfriend Paul (Justin Long) but she isn’t happy.  Pale, drawn and a pill-popper, she looks eerlie similar to the lifeless zombies in The Walking Dead (without the rotting skin part).  Anna is killed in a car crash early on and wakes up lying on a mortuary slab in a funeral parlour where she meets Eliot (Liam Neeson), the creepy funeral director who explains to Anna that she has died and that he has a gift for helping the dead transition to the next phase.

This film reaches for a chilling atmosphere and manages to sustain the confusion and sense of unreality for the first half as Anna fights to escape whom she believes to be a psycho.  However the plot is extremely slow moving, and attempts to liven up the action and maintain the interest of viewers with bizarre imagery such as Anna appearing in the shower before Paul and ripping out her own heart fail.  Ricci is also naked for a significant amount of time if that tickles your fancy?  Such shock tactics only undermine the original spooky factor.  Is Eliot telling Anna the truth or is he insane?  This twisty horror tale isn’t interesting enough to keep audiences caring until the end.

Can’t decide if it should be ** or *** for attempting to offer something new to the horror genre; hmm.

Check it out on Amazon HERE