Justin Long

Anchor Bay is set to bring us After.Life on April 6th, and in preparation they've released a trailer for the film over at Apple. Fans hoping to catch an early (and free) glimpse of star Christina Ricci naked will be disappointed--this is a mere green band trailer and doesn't feature any nudity. Guess you'll all have to wait for the full version of the film for that...

The Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo-directed feature finds Ricci playing an accident victim who wakes up to discover a funeral director (Liam Neeson) preparing her for burial. Neeson assures Ricci that she's dead and that he has a "special gift" that allows him to help the newly departed transition to the afterlife, but she's not buying it. Meanwhile, Ricci's boyfriend (Justin Long) doesn't believe she's really dead at all--and suspects Neeson isn't just some undertaker, but something far more nefarious.

Jump past the break for a look at the After.Life trailer.

Agnieszka Wotowicz-Vosloo's latest horror-thriller, After.Life, has drawn Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci and Justin Long to its cast for a story about, well, the after life. Anchor Bay snagged the title last month and just announced that the film will receive a limited theatrical release on April 9.

After Anna (Ricci) endures a horrific car accident, she wakes up on a mortician's (Neeson) table unsure if she's actually dead or alive. He tries to convince her she is in transition for the after life and he is the only one who can help her cross over. Anna's boyfriend Paul (Long) is not convinced of Anna's finality and tries to save her before she is quite possibly buried alive.

No word yet on a DVD release date, but in the meantime check out the exclusive stills from After.Life that we premiered back in August to wet your palette. Seeing this title pop up during Shutter Island's opening weekend and the ruckus surrounding Berlins' screening of The Killer Inside Me has me wondering how many of you are instantly suspicious when bigger talent is cast in a horror film? Are blockbuster names an immediate repellent for you? Discuss.

Alright, there's going to be spoilers from the get-go, but if you're a good Horror Squad reader, you likely caught Sam Raimi's so-called "spook-a-blast" in theaters or recently on home video (and enjoyed the, um, heck out of it).

So this entry could go one of two ways. We could concern ourselves with Christine (Alison Lohman), whose gypsy-spurning behavior results in a three-day-long curse. She is bashed around her house, given the mother of all nosebleeds, forced to kill her kitten (and for naught, it turns out), embarrassed before her potential in-laws, driven to pawn most of her possessions, whacked with a sizable gravestone, and then -- in spite of all her best intentions and elaborate schemes -- dragged down to hell for some good old-fashioned eternal damnation.

OR we go with Christine's boyfriend, Clay (Justin Long). He is forced to see his love fall prey to forces that he -- the psychiatry major and eternal skeptic -- fails to comprehend, embarrass herself before his parents (who weren't so keen on her to begin with), and then see her dragged to hell before his very eyes. How do you explain that away? How do you even live with that? Is that not an equally damning Fate Worse Than Death?

Horror Squad just got our hands on a swath of exclusive images from the upcoming film After.Life, starring Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Long. The film, written by Paul and Agnieszka Wojtowicz Vosloo, tells the story of a woman (Ricci) drifting between her corporeal life and the after life while under the care of a funeral director (Neeson) who may or may not be intentionally trying to bury the poor woman alive.

Those details may seem vague at this point and you may never have heard of the writer/director Vosloo team, but considering the acting talent attracted to the material, I'm willing to plant After.Life firmly on my radar. If anything, the gallery bellow should help whet your appetite until more information bubbles to the surface. After. Life is currently in post-production and is due out in 2010. Special thanks to the mysterious source who passed along these images.