Here After (2024)-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

 

Plot: After Robin miraculously survives an accident, Claire is happy and relieved. But when Robin exhibits off behaviour, Claire begins to wonder who came back with her from the afterlife.

Quick Review of the Movie

What happens in the afterlife? We never know for sure, which is why horror filmmakers use the unknown and the curiosity regarding the afterlife to their advantage.

HERE AFTER provides one such idea about the afterlife, and while it has an interesting concept, it doesn't offer a different perspective. It has a lengthy climax, which seems to imply that you move on only after you resolve your issues.

The movie depends heavily on Connie Britton, and she manages to do justice to her role as a grieving yet conflicted mother.

There is one part in the movie where she delivers an honest representation of a grieving person who must pretend to be alright so as not to make other people uncomfortable. The nuances in her performance are evident, and so is her earnest effort.

HERE AFTER Movie Plot

The movie begins with Claire enjoying a performance by her daughter Robin, who is a pianist. Her performance is lauded by everyone, and we learn that she can not speak and uses sign language to communicate.  Her father is Luca, who has left Claire and is now with Adriana.

Adriana and Luca want to take Robin out for pizza to celebrate. Claire is invited too, but she politely declines. Robin wants to study for a test, but Claire encourages her to go out and have fun.

Claire goes to spend time with Renato, Robin's grandfather, who has dementia. Claire tries her best to help him remember Robin and tells him about her recital. Renato is barely interested.

The next morning, Robin is nervous because her father and instructor have set her up for an audition. Robin wants to ride her bike, and her mother tells her to be careful.

Claire is an English literature teacher. We get to see her teach only in the first half of the movie. In the rest of the movie, the school was on a break, or she was on a break.

Claire is still in school when she learns that her daughter got in an accident.

Claire and Luca rush to the emergency room, but Robin is unresponsive as the doctors work on her. Claire is sent away by the doctors, who then goes to pray for her daughter. Adriana comes to comfort Luca and Claire, but Claire is having none of it.

The doctors inform the parents that Robin isn't responding. Claire finds that Robin's bracelet has fallen on the floor and puts it back on her. When the doctor tells her that Robin is no more, both parents weep. Claire holds Robin's hand and notices a movement that the doctor disregards.

But that is when Robin decides to wake up.

While she is resting, the doctor warns the parents that since Robin was dead for 20 minutes, chances are that she would suffer some brain damage.

When Robin wakes up, she surprises everyone by being able to talk. The doctor thinks the trauma she faced, which led her to stop talking, may have healed the part of the brain that now let's her speak.

Claire is overjoyed to have her sister back, but Robin soon exhibits strange behaviour. She watches cartoons, eats ice cream, and shows zero interest in the piano.

At school, Robin almost squishes a bird in her hand, shocking her classmates. Claire manages to save the bird in town.

Claire discusses the stranger behaviour with the doctor, but he can't find anything wrong in her reports.

Later, when Claire is swimming, she is pulled under and saved by her friend. Claire claims to know who could be behind it all.

When Robin strangles a girl in the bathroom so that she too can experience the afterlife, Robin is expelled, and Claire decides to take help from Father Sergio.

She takes Robin to the church to speak to him, but Robin starts throwing up water during the sermon.

Claire thinks an exorcism should be performed on Robin, but the Father involves Luca in all of this who isn't happy that Robin is subjecting their daughter to exorcisms. He takes Robin away from Claire.

Dejected, Claire visits a support group and hears people's experiences with the afterlife. Some of them experienced nothing, but some of them saw their loved ones.

Claire is approached by the support group head, Dr Ben, who offers to take her out.

Eventually, Claire opens up to Ben about a traumatic experience that she faced recently.

She was married to Luca for years but couldn't conceive in spite of going through treatments.

 

 When her IVF treatment finally worked, she conceived twins, Robin and Rose.

But things between Luca and Claire were not working out. Since he became an alcoholic, he and Claire used to argue a lot, leading to her taking the kids and driving away.

But Rose was a brat and kept kicking Claire's seat when she was already too upset and rattled. She loses control of the car, and it falls into the water.

Claire manages to pull Robin free, but Rose is moving around too much to get her seat belt open. Afraid that they might all drown, Claire had to abandon her daughter and save only Robin.

That was the incident that caused Robin to stop speaking. In order to forget about the incident, Claire removed all of Rose's photos and never spoke of her again.

Meanwhile, Luca is doing a terrible job at keeping an eye on Robin, who goes to a bridge and jumps into the freezing water.

When she is found, she is barely alive, and the doctors leave it up to Claire and Luca to decide when they want to pull the plug.

HERE AFTER Ending Explained

Inspired by Ben's book about the afterlife, Claire decides that Rose may be holding Robin back in the afterlife plane.

She fills her bathtub with ice, calls the emergency number, and then drowns herself. She fully intends to come back.

Claire manages to enter the afterlife area, where she sees her car in which her daughter had drowned.

In this long, dramatic scene sans dialogue, Claire manages to make peace with Rose, who forgives her. She reunites with Robin, too, and they are allowed to return to the real world.

Claire is revived by a medic while Robin awakens in the hospital.

In the last scene, Robin is still able to talk and play the piano. Claire is watching happily with Ben by her side, and Luca and Adriana are sitting behind her.

Robin is playing the piano, and we see the reflection of her fingers on the surface of the piano. When the song ends, the reflected fingers pull away.

The movie ends.

My Take On The Movie

So we must now assume that Rose still lives inside Robin and the real Robin is helping her sister with piano playing.

Makes sense, of course. Considering Rose didn't finish her education, she needs to rely on a music scholarship to get ahead.

HERE AFTER is bland in parts, plays like a show in a theatre, and has nothing eerie to actually be called a horror movie.

It is a decent watch at best.

Scare Scale: 2.5/5