Hereafter is Clint Eastwood‘s newest film, starring Matt Damon, Cécile de France, Frankie and George McLaren, Bryce Dallas Howard and a cameo by Derek Jacobi.

Plot:
Three people all touched by death:
French journalist Marie LeLay (Cécile de France) is on holidays when she’s hit by the Tsunami and almost drowns. From then on, she’s obsessed with the life after death experience she’s had and tries to make sense of it all.
George Lonegan (Matt Damon) is trying to hard to lead a normal life, which is made impossible by his talent: whenever he touches someone, he sees the dead people who were close to them.
Marcus (George and Frankie McLaren) tries to get back on his feet after the death of his twin brother Jason (Frankie and George McLaren) and his mother (Lyndsey Marshal) going to rehab.

As I’ve said before, I really don’t like Clint Eastwood as a director. So nobody was more surprised than me that the thing I liked least about this film was Peter Morgan‘s script.

I’m astonished to report that I mostly wasn’t bored during the film and that I didn’t think that the movie was two hours longer than it should be – which is the usual way I feel about Clint Eastwood movies. That’s mostly because I was invested into the storyline about the twins. The other two storylines not so much. But that story had my attention.

Not entirely in a good way, though. The way the English social system is portrayed has to be the most fantastical thing (in a film that’s about the afterlife): There are two social workers who drop everything to visit one of their charges, and then to recommend not to call the police when he’s missing? Seriously?*

Well. That was my first (huge) complaint about the script. The second was that they had to go there and try to get science on board to support those afterlife claims. If they’d left it all in the realm of the fantastical, I wouldn’t have minded at all. But when they started with the esoteric bullshit about how most people have the same experiences when they die being proof that there’s some magical land for the dead, I just wanted to strangle Peter Morgan.

At least the performances were good, especially the McLaren twins were wonderful. Cécile de France was great, too. Matt Damon left me mostly cold, but then he often does and the character is not favorable either.

Summarising: Hereafter ends up being passable, not more.

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*This is a very personal point of contention, but dammit nobody ever gets this right and since my parents work in the Austrian social system, that is seriously annoying.