MovieChat Forums > After.Life (2009) Discussion > here's one thing the movie wouldn't admi...

here's one thing the movie wouldn't admit to....

posted 13 years ago by futurewriter78
8 replies | jump to latest

{spoilers}

Just saw the movie last night. From what I remember, Elliot stated her funeral was in about 7 days (I think?) The human body can't live without water any more than three days LOL. Anyone wonder about that? While I know that she was alive all this time after seeing all the posts and FAQ's, the plot hole would be that she couldn't possibly survive that long without food and/or water LOL. The explanation would be that she was given food and/or water off-screen. Or maybe she was drinking water from the faucet in the room while he was gone. "Hey Elliot! I can't be possibly dead! I'm starving! I'm thirsty! I had to drink the water from the tab! But there's no food in here! Could you get me a plate?"

But of course, the movie wouldn't admit to that. It would only give it away that she was alive.

[–] HenryCW 13 years ago

Other than food and water, the greatest nonsense was that Christina appeared to be completely impervious to pain despite her grievous injuries - and any feeling of pain would, of course give away that she was alive. With her deep wounds on her head and ribcage she would be screaming with pain as soon as the effects of anesthetics wear off. Any dose of drugs heavy enough to kill the pain completely would also kill her or at least make her pass out completely. It is ridiculous that she was able to talk, get up, walk around, and even fight like any normal person. The military would certainly want some drug like that.

[–] futurewriter78 13 years ago

lol that's a good point, too. I was thinking he was giving her a lot of pain-killers alright, but even then, I didn't think about the idea it would wear off LOL. But logically, funeral directors wouldn't have the privilege to possess pain-killers, but knowing his intelligence, he probably could've access them somewhere illegally.

[–] Tiggr500 13 years ago

Let's not forget that at the end the wound on her forehead was healed (or at least well covered up)

Abandon thought and let the dream descend

[–] suzyQz 13 years ago

No, Eliot told her her funeral would be in 3 days. Which, incidentally, is ridiculous, because every person who I've known who died was ready for the wake/viewing the day after the death.

The director didn't explain the food/water situation in the dvd extra, but there could have been a couple of explanations. A few years back, a couple of doctors I had to talk to (unfortunately) said that some research showed that comatose/catatonic patients did not feel hunger or thirst. Obviously, the drug Eliot was giving Anna put her in a catatonic state for at least a while, so that drug might also have eliminated her appetite.

Also, in the midst of Anna's ordeal at the funeral home, she "woke up" in bed with Paul and told him she'd had a crazy dream in which she'd died. I think this could have been an hallucination, and Eliot could have given her hallucinogenics and fed her while she was in that state.

[–] mic7440 13 years ago

A comatose person would not actually feel hunger or thirst pains in a way that we could determine and measure. However the human body would show signs of starvation and dehydration. If he fed her and gave her fluids while she slept then she would have had to defecate and urinate at some point. At the very least she would have felt gassy and/or urgency.

The effects of hunger and dehydration cannot be explained away. After even one day of not eating her blood sugar level would have dropped soo low that she would have had a decreased level of consciousness. She would have been cold, sweaty, delirious, or any one of the numerous signs that starvation is occurring. Dehydration would have had her electrolytes all out of whack. She would have had mouth/throat dryness, muscle spasm, aches, etc. Yet we see her screaming, breaking things, running up stairs and hiding, brandishing knives, and holding normal conversations. BTW, she's holding the knife about to stab him, she runs through the house and up some stairs, she gets scared and almost goes into panic, she destroys the entire room, and she screams at the top of her lungs calling to her fiance yet her heart beat doesn't become evident to her? How is it even possible to do all that after 3 days with no food or water?

If he gave her a drug that was strong enough to induce catatonia then it would have worn off in a matter of hours and the pain would have returned. Remember, she was in an accident that was apparently soo intense that she was mistaken for dead. An accident that severe would have required serious pain meds. And even the strongest pain meds (like morphine) would wear off in a matter of hours. He would have had to keep giving her drugs every few hours, even in the middle of the night.

Despite all this the real kicker is that he injects a drug into her veins several times and it works within seconds each time. No medication works without circulation. ESPECIALLY not injections...no way. Everybody knows this. Yet as shes falling asleep she didn't wonder "hey, that's weird...how did that work? Maybe I am alive. I'm outta here when I wake up".

And why would a mortician need IV drugs anyway. "Hey, I'm the mortician. I need a good drug that'll knock a person out for a few hours. What do you recommend?". Sound a little suspicious to you? Ok maybe he got them illegally but shouldn't she have wondered why he has a drug like that?

The whole movie was a wreck. You'd have to stretch your imagination as far as it will go and abandon all logic to make anything in this movie believable. The director is an idiot and her explanations only prove her stupidity. It's offensive that she thinks the load of crap she calls an explanation is believable. I understand the intentions of the movie but even the most basic common sense could derail any answer she offers.

[–] imdb-ary 13 years ago

That was an excellent analysis of the plot holes in the movie!

[–] osubuckeye420 13 years ago

Agreed, the movie was a mess of plot holes. I only watched one time (one time was more than enough).

As I was watching it I kept thinking...

1) She's gotta be dead... it's been days and she hasn't drank any water, ate any food, or had to use the restroom. She didn't even eat dinner the night that she died (stormed out of the restaurant after Long placed her order), so it was more like 4-5 days. Even if he was drugging her, there's no way that it would keep her alive for 4-5 days without water. You can make the point that he hooked her up to an IV when she was out or something like that, but they never showed it, so I'm skeptical.

Also, even if he was hooking her up to an IV... he only gave her the knockout drug 3-4 times throughout the movie, and it only knocked her out for a few hours at a time (generally when Neeson had guests in the morgue). It didn't give him enough time to properly feed/hydrate her... as he would have had to roll in a whole IV system and let it do it's work/roll out the IV system before she woke up (which was inconsistant, as we saw at the very end of the movie).

I think that was by far the greatest plot hole, and I haven't heard anyone explain it.

2) The breath on the mirror suddently being the "a-ha!" moment for Ricci was preposterious. So, the fact that her scar was naturally healing wasn't an "a-ha!" moment? The fact that she was running all throughout the house with an elevated heartrate wasn't an "a-ha!" moment? If you want to make the argument that she was just dumb, I guess I can buy that... but there were multiple times throughout the movie where if she had even basic common sense, she would have known that she wasn't dead.

3) What kind of painkillers does Neeson have this chick on? They have to be the absolute greatest painkillers in the world if Ricci is able to wake up the morning after the accident and still not feel any physical pain at all. I will suspend belief and say that when she initially "woke up" on the table in the funeral home that the sodium bromine or whatever it was, was still working. At some point, it would have to run out though and Ricci would have to be like, "OW!". This didn't happen once over 4-5 days? I find that incredibly hard to believe.

4) Towards the end I also kept thinking... "how does he know these people are "emotionally dead"?" Even if Neeson was in the restaurant (I didn't see him there, but I only watched it once and wasn't looking for it) and saw Long/Ricci fighting, was that really all that he needed to base his decision that she was "dead"? If so, they probably should have made his character even more deranged than they made him.

At the VERY end when they were showing all the pictures of the "victims" I was like, "there's no way he keeps getting away with this". He almost got busted a dozen or more times with Ricci (after he was an established "pro")... are we really supposed to believe that he has done this dozens or possibly hundreds of times prior to this?

5) The very end where Justin Long "died" was laughably bad. You really expect me to believe that an entire funeral home worth of people saw Long shove Neeson (after heavily drinking), then hop in his car and no one

A) Tried to stop Long

B) Thought it was suspcious when Neeson exited the room shortly after (with a young boy) to tail Long in his van, inject his body with sodium bromide (or whatever it was called), then go to the hospital and collect the body?

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It was an interesting movie, but if the director wanted to get the point across that Neeson was a psycho and Ricci was actually alive (as I guess she mentioned in the commentary), she glossed over WAY too many important details.

[–] jones8557-1 11 years ago

3 day is about the average for people I know. My mother and grandmother stayed out a week.