Hereafter Review: The film opens with a French newscaster Marie LeLay (Cecile De France, High Tension) and her producer on vacation in the tropics. As she goes out to buy gifts for his children, a tsunami waves strikes the coastline. It’s the best scene in the entire film, even if the CGI looks like something Brad Bird fucked around with when he was in high school. Marie drowns and dies, and sees an ethereal plane full of the shadowy outlines of what are presumably ghosts. She’s brought back from death, and becomes so deeply affected it begins to pervade her professional and personal life. So much so that she’s prompted to use her Velma like investigative reporter skills to go to one person and use all of their research to write a book. De France turns in the strongest performance in the film, despite all the lame tropes leveled at her by the script.
Meanwhile, in London, we’ve got a pair of precocious tween twins Marcus and Jason (Frankie and George MacLaren). Their segment plays like Charles Dickens take on Precious. They band together to get schoolwork done and take care of their junkie mother, using elaborate trickery to fool Child Protective Services (or whatever it’s actually called in Britain). While en route to the chemist’s to get his mother’s detox medication, one of the twins is harassed by some local toughs and runs out into the street where he’s hit by a truck — while on the phone with his twin brother. Now, alone and orphaned since his mother has to go to rehab from the trauma, the surviving twin tries to research the afterlife to talk to the brother he misses. Hey, Morgan, you got a little Haggis on you there, son. The MacLaren boys do a fine job looking Highmore-ishly adorable and putting on the sad and skeptical faces necessary for the role.
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