Many movies have dealt with the agonized grief that follows a child’s death. More than a few, notably “Pet Sematary” and its ilk, have dealt with the … er, awkwardness when said child unnaturally comes back to life, or at least un-death. Smoothly crafted but uninspired “Here After” tries to have it both ways, playing that resurrection for horror-adjacent creepiness that never quite goes anywhere, then pivoting to a sentimental mix of sacrifice and redemption similar to “faith-based entertainment” without quite making the commitment.
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Despite the efforts of toplining Connie Britton as an American expat in Rome, Robert Salerno’s feature directorial bow ultimately feels like a supernatural drama suited for television, too mild in its suspense and too pat in its soapy emphasis on maternal suffering. Paramount is launching the co-production in U.S. theaters and on digital this Friday, several weeks after its Italian release.
Over the last quarter-century, Salerno has produced films by a number of distinctive auteurs, including Charlie Kaufman, Lynne Ramsay, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Brady Corbet, Tom Ford and Billy Bob Thornton, as well as the more overtly commercial 2022 hit “Smile” and its imminent sequel. But “Here After” doesn’t feel like a personal expression, or even an enthusiastic embrace of genre material. While polished enough, it lacks the kind of individual stylistic stamp that might have elevated the formulaic yet vague script by Sarah Conradt (who was also a writer on Benoit Delhomme’s recent “Mothers’ Instinct”).
Britton plays Claire, who teaches English-language literature at a Catholic school where teenage daughter Robin (Freya Hannan-Mills), a piano prodigy, is a student. They’ve stayed in Rome presumably to remain near the girl’s father Luca (Giovanni Cirfiera), though he’s moved on to start a new family with his second wife (Syama Rayner), a source of some tight-lipped resentment for ex-spouse Claire. Teased in occasional flashbacks, the cause of their divorce is not fully revealed until late going here.
Bicycling to a conservatory audition in a rainstorm, Robin suffers a serious accident and, to her parents’ despair, dies in the emergency room. Yet after all hope is lost, she inexplicably revives, almost as if in answer to her mother’s prayers. This “miracle” soon turns out to be a mixed bag, however, as Robin acts very differently — sniping at mom, dropping the F-bomb, behaving in a threatening fashion toward schoolmates. Even her musicianship appears to have vanished overnight. A brain scan turns up no discernible issues, but when Claire begins experiencing frightful hallucinations herself, she decides the adolescent must be possessed by some evil entity after visiting “the other side.” Church authorities and Luca dismiss that as nonsense. More receptive is physician Ben (Tommaso Basili), who runs a support group for survivors of near-death experiences.
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It is to him that Claire eventually spills a long, rambling monologue explaining the circumstances that ended her marriage, and may have left an angry spirit out to avenge itself — or to seek healing reconciliation. A watery climax involving a prior, second fatal traffic accident provides that opportunity. But the supernatural elements here make little sense, despite the metaphysical mishmash characters occasionally ponder out loud. In the end, one conclusion to be drawn (if any) is that Claire is somehow being punished for the moral crime of breaking up the family unit, even though it’s clear that Luca wasn’t much of a husband or father.
The result is at once convoluted and simplistic, half-heartedly using horror tropes as a means of working toward a rather confused notion of forgiveness. We’re led to expect terrifying deeds from the resuscitated Robin, but nothing much happens in that realm, leaving Hannan-Mills stuck striking a series of pasty-faced, hollow-eyed, “demonic” expressions that ultimately just feel like a ruse.
Britton is a dependable actor more than capable of rising to a meaty opportunity. Yet while this story is entirely from Claire’s point of view, her role is primarily a reactive one, responding to situations that aren’t particularly well-developed or credible. There’s not much she or the competent support cast can do to sell this scenario, which might’ve had greater impact had Salerno taken a more heightened, idiosyncratic directorial approach. Instead, he realizes the script with a tasteful efficiency and not much else, while production designer Luca Merlini’s elegant settings, DP Bartosz Nalazek’s handsome cinematography and other contributions do more to muffle than build sinister atmospherics. Fabrizio Mancinelli’s string-driven original score does more to achieve a desired urgency in the targeted intersection of grief and tension.
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