Matt Damon plays a medium, rare: His psychic really does see dead people but refuses to exploit their living loved ones with his gift.
For today’s moody movie about death, a suddenly happy ending contradicts a solemn, evocative buildup. But “Hereafter” deserves credit for at least confronting the Big Question.
What happens when we die? This is a legitimate question for an 80-year-old director to explore, even one as grounded and unpretentious as Clint Eastwood. Working from a scattered screenplay by the accomplished writer Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”), though, the filmmaker never posits much of a cohesive theory.
Instead, the well-intentioned, unhurried drama concentrates on character. In separate storylines that will eventually, too conveniently intersect, “Hereafter” hones in on three melancholy victims each with an otherworldly obsession. But though the picture does dare to offer a few shadowy, split-second glimpses of the afterlife, it pussyfoots around the larger issues it raises. And only one of the three plotlines finally delivers the intended emotional effect.
This heartbreaking scenario concerns working-class English twin boys Marcus and Jason, played interchangeably by real-life identical twins George McLaren and Frankie McLaren, youngsters who elicit great sympathy. The brothers’ alcoholic mother can barely function. Social Services looms to break up the family when something even more unthinkable occurs. Marcus can’t get over his grief.
Meanwhile, in the movie’s one thrilling action set piece, a privileged French television journalist Marie (Cecile de France) has a near-death experience when she gets injured during a catastrophic Southeast Asian tsunami. She has a haunting vision of “the other side.” Now, she can’t shake the ordeal and is starting to lose everything — including her career and shallow boss/boyfriend (Thierry Neuvic).
At the same time, psychic George Lonegan (Damon) only wants to forget the visions of the dead he gets whenever he touches someone. Though his brother (Jay Mohr) urges him to make money from his unique ability, George just wants a regular job and a regular life. He tries to have a relationship with an unsuspecting girl (Bryce Dallas Howard), but it is hard for him to ignore what he sees and knows about her and everyone else.
When these stories converge, a spiritual catharsis is meant to transform them.
Downbeat, almost trancelike performances from the three main characters seem intended to reflect the depth of an ethereal consciousness. But the deadpan makes for a sometimes deadly “Hereafter.”
