A MORNING of meditative Japanese arthouse cinema might not normally strike me as the most inviting way to spend a couple of hours, but whatever it was that took hold of me, I was seriously looking forward to this occasion. The press release looked intriguing – a beautiful oriental face twinned with a press-quote about the film’s ‘richly affecting tribute to the healing power of love’ – so I thought, ‘fuck it, why not? I’ll have some of this’. But Jesus Christ to fuck, if I’d had any idea of what lay in store, I’d have taken my chances with 11o’clock Mass instead.

As After Life’s official press release concedes, director Korezeda “has created a movie whose texture grows slowly, like layers of paint.’ An apt description, indeed.

It’s set in some sort of nebulous nether-zone situated directly between death and Heaven, and for the film’s entire duration, I was convinced I’d entered some sort of black hole where normal concepts of space and time cease to operate.

The characters – 22 newly-deceased people of divergent ages and social backgrounds – all clock in at an ugly grey building, whereupon they are all interviewed in order to ascertain their suitability for Heaven. The characters are all dead, and by Christ do they show it. A bunch so boring and lifeless they could appear on Questions & Answers, they are all given two days to select one special memory from their lives (one!!!) which they can then carry with them into the eternal valley of peace. That, literally, is it.

And the filming?!?! Close-ups go on and on and on for no discernible reason: the camera focuses on an empty chair, decides it likes the look of it, and stays there for an entire minute. Without even trying, a movie about the miracle of eternal life after death has managed to make it seem like the worst fate imaginable.

If the afterlife is half as boring as this, I want no part of it. Bury me in Hell, where at least I’m led to believe the wine flows freely and the sun never rises.