After moving back to his family home following two years in a correctional institute, distressed teenager John (Ulrik Munther) yearns for a normal life but the town remains shaken by the events surrounding his incarceration. While tensions rise between John and his father (Mats Blomgren), despite forming a good relationship with younger brother Filip (Alexander Nordgren), school life becomes troubled as further anxiety mounts and the students grow increasingly hostile.
Award-winning short film-maker Magnus van Horn’s feature debut slowly teases details of the protagonist’s crime while drawing the audience into its sterile world of repressed rage. The Here After could have been a terse, atmospheric tale, dense with complex characters and a sustained sense of foreboding but it is a bleak and disappointingly laborious watch as conflicts infrequently surface with effect. A numbing detachment evoked by ill-angled shots and the aforementioned lack of detail, cripples the modest suspense and character empathy and The Here After wanes into a somnolent slog.
If it was Horn’s intention to convey indifference, possibly to reflect his protagonist’s mental state, he succeeds, but it’s no substitute for explosive drama (in this context) or a compelling narrative. The Here After is often crushingly dull as a result of this mishandling but the pace does pick up when troubles arise at school and John befriends Malin (Loa Ek), a new to the area student. This warm companionship melds well with the slow growing sense of unease but, even though the roles are excellently portrayed (Swedish pop singer Munther delivers a staggering lead performance), for its majority The Here After fails to rouse or resonate.
While slightly shy of painstaking due to the decent performances, what thriving tension does arise is a little too late in the day. Where brusque drama and better emphasised conflict would have worked wonders within the desolate, rural setting, as it stands The Here After is the cinematic equivalent of watching damp socks hang off a clothes line or pondering oblivion in a hospital with the very nearly dead.
The Here After provides a realistic depiction of a fractured, Swedish hamlet but hangs morose on the screen like a film with the flu, sunken in its solemn delineation and constantly waiting to slip away. As the life slowly slithers from the first two acts, it makes you wonder how good it could have been given Horn’s ability clear talent and ability to suggest such emptiness. Despite a surprisingly gripping and curt resolve, The Here After is an overly reflective cinematic vacuum that will leave you cynical, hollow-hearted and dead from the neck up.
