MISCELLANY

Movie Review: Hereafter

1Jo 5:20 : And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.

Hereafter Marcus is a young boy whose brother Jason has died not long ago. Marcus wants to contact Jason and is searching the Internet. He comes upon a YouTube video where a serious-looking man intones: “Hello. A number of us are probably too frightened to ask, ‘What happens to us when we die?’ But the good news is, if you believe in Christ, you have nothing to fear.” Shaking his head in response, Marcus doesn't like that answer. Apparently neither does the movie Hereafter.

Hereafter follows three separate storylines dealing with life after death. The stories alternate through the movie and finally merge by movie's end. Marie (played by Cécile de France) is a French TV reporter who has a near-death experience while on vacation. George (played by Matt Damon) is a psychic living and working in San Francisco. Marcus (played alternately by Frankie McLaren and George McLaren) is a young boy living in London who has lost his twin brother Jason.

Marie's brush with death, meeting a south-Asian tsunami head on, happens within the opening minutes of the movie. It is a wave that pushes her through the remainder of the film as she tries to make sense of what happened. She ends up using her reporting skills to write a book about her encounter with death. In her quest to learn more about the experience, she visits a research scientist who runs a hospice in Switzerland. The self-proclaimed atheist confirms Marie's descriptions of the light, the peacefulness, the all-knowing, all-sensing out-of-body experience — “I think you experienced death.”

Meanwhile, George the psychic is just trying to get by with his gift. “It is not a gift, it's a curse,” he tells his brother. The gift/curse, of course, is his ability to talk with the dead. With an ability like that, there is little wonder that he is so much in demand, as the movie shows us. And the movie makes it very clear that George is genuine. First of all, whenever he takes someone's hand to give a reading, we hear this “whoosh ker-chunk” sound. Then there is George's insistence that his subject tell him as little information as possible — “don't tell me, let me guess” he seems to say. And ‘guess’ he does, and apparently gets it right, time after time. The final stamp of George's psychic authenticity is his reluctance to accept money. He would rather work in a warehouse than to make a living contacting the dead. He treats the ability more like a burden than a mission (or a for-profit enterprise).

The most heart-felt of the three stories is the one belonging to Marcus, first with his brother Jason trying to out-wit social workers so they can stay with their substance-abusing mother, then dealing with Jason's death and his new foster home. At Jason's funeral, a well-meaning reverend tries to assure those in attendance that “Death is not final. It is the beginning.” He then goes on to give a watered-down Christian message of heaven and angels. The service lasts just a few minutes: those waiting for the next service are already at the door (a group of Sikhs who presumably will receive a watered-down message of their own).

All three storylines intersect and merge at the end of the movie in London. Marie has traveled there to promote her new book, Hereafter: The Conspiracy of Silence, at the London Book Fair. George is trying to get away from his psychic burdens and, on a lark it seems, has gone to visit the city of his favorite author, Charles Dickens. Marcus, still in search of Jason, has found George on the internet and recognizes him at the Book Fair, at a reading given by Marie.

Like puzzle pieces fitting together, the movie's final message emerges: there is life after death, it is good, and it will be experienced by everyone, no matter what they believe. Or so one would have to conclude with the evidence that Hereafter has provided. And, according to the movie, it is a “conspiracy of silence” that the message is being kept hidden from the world.

What Hereafter omits are a couple of key points.

First, the movie suggests that all near-death experiences are good and positive. Not true. They can be bad. They can be terrifying. And even with the peaceful ones, what assurance is there that the beckoning light is a good one? “Do not go into the light” was the advice from another paranormal movie, Poltergeist. And the Bible agrees with that assessment of ‘light’ (II Corinthians 11:14).

Second, on the matter of talking with the dead, I do not question the sincerity of George (or many ‘real’ psychics like him). He believes he has contacted dead and is talking with them. But what if the spirits he is communicating with are not dead souls after all but fallen angels? What if they are deceiving him? Here also the Bible supports that level of communication (John 8:44).

To me, the most telling line in the entire movie is when Jason tells Marcus (through George) that, in heaven, “you can be all things, and all at once.” I'm sure the screenwriter intended a revelation with great impact and depth, but to my ears it fell flat. It sounded false. You get one chance to tell your living brother back on earth what heaven is like, and then you mouth a New Age platitude about, what, the infinite potential of nothing?

The truth is, there is a conspiracy about life after death without Christ, but it is more a conspiracy of deception than of silence. And, although admittedly well-made and entertaining, this movie plays right into it.

Hereafter — 2010 — Matt Damon, Cécile de France, Frankie McLaren, George McLaren — Directed by Clint Eastwood

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