I had to think hard about whether or not I liked this movie. While it does have its moments, they are overshadowed by this movie’s lazy writing. Here After is one of the laziest romantic comedies I have ever seen. 

Here After is about a romance between a ghost and a living woman. The movie deals with relationships, love, and the afterlife, but it does so ineffectively. It gets incredibly hard to watch with how hard it tries to be a sappy love story.

A lot of the narrative exists within pretentious conversations about life, death, and love. While there are some quirky and fun scenes, the whole movie doesn’t carry this energy. Instead, it becomes another generic and predictable love story. Its desperate attempts to be different sadly cannot hide the fact that this love story has been told better elsewhere.

Micheal and Honey Bee fall in love, but can’t be together. Obviously, this movie will build up a romantic journey just to have Honey Bee die at the end. They have to end up together forever somehow. What makes this movie incredibly lazy is that the only reason that the two can interact is that Honey Bee is also conveniently dying. It’s hard to believe that in New York City, these two can find each other by chance.

My biggest problem with this movie is the inconsistency of the rules for the afterlife. These rules seem to change to fit the narrative or are overlooked by its bad writing. The movie sets up that people cannot die alone. Instead, those who die alone must find a soul mate before they can cross over. Cross over to what? The movie doesn’t specify.

So what are the rules? A soul mate is strictly a romantic partner. What happens to asexual people? Narcissists? What happens if I die and I become best friends with someone? Can we cross over as bros? I love my wife. She is my soulmate. If I die before her, do I automatically pass over? What if she remarries? Do I get yanked out of the other side, forced to seek out a new soul mate?

When a person becomes a ghost, he is removed from all his distracting feelings. These change depending on what the story needs to be, but lust seems to be constant. A ghost whose mind isn’t clouded by a desire for sex is free to find his true love. There are lines of dialogue that contradict this, but no one’s paying that close attention. The ghosts still roam the Earth, but can’t touch or affect the physical world or living people. Unless of course, it is alcohol, glasses containing alcohol, books, and your true love. Like everything, this will change if the plot needs to move forward or there needs to be a cheap laugh.

I am clearly overanalyzing a movie that doesn’t deserve it. I can’t recommend this movie. It is pretentious, lazy, and inconsistent. Even if you like these kinds of movies, I don’t find this love story to be all that inspiring. Micheal has to be reprogrammed in order to find Honey Bee, what happens when he gets those feelings back? Anyways, you can find this movie on YouTube for free. Oh and if you are watching this for Christina Ricci, she is barely in the movie.