Top 10 Thought Provoking Life After Death Movies

Heaven and Hell make for a tidy little dichotomy, but purgatory tends to be a gray area in religion… and films treats it much the same. In the mind of writer, director and lead actor Albert Brooks, purgatory is a city-sized waiting room, aptly named “Judgment City,” where the recently deceased stand trial. It’s less about morality, and more about overcoming fear. If you overcame your fears, you can move on to the next plane of existence. If not… Please try again. While the judges deliberate, however, there are plenty of fantastic services at your disposal, including great restaurants and comedy clubs. We’re not sure what heaven looks like in Albert Brooks’ mind, but we’d settle with spending eternity in his version of purgatory.

What if we told you that you have to spend your life being haunted by the ghost of Greg Kinnear? Yeah… that’s what we thought. Following a near-death experience, Bertram Pincus develops the unpleasant ability to see ghosts, all of whom seem to want his help in resolving their unfinished earthly business. Think “Ghost Whisperer,” but sadly lacking Jennifer Love Hewitt. While the initial premise of the film may feel a bit played out, the plot takes the idea of ghosts, and the reason behind their continued presence on earth, in a remarkably original direction. Ghosts don’t stick around to get closure. They stick around until they can give closure to their loved ones.

How far would you go to answer the question of what lies beyond? Morbid curiosity is what compels us to slow down and stare when we see a car crash. It’s the reason public executions used to be so well attended. But as the tagline of “Flatliners” warns, “some lines shouldn’t be crossed,” a lesson the medical students in the film learn the hard way. They begin intentionally stopping their hearts in a controlled environment, in order to experience death temporarily before being brought back via defibrillator. What they learn is that in death we confront our greatest sins. And in cheating death, you bring them back with you to the land of the living until you resolve them.

Unless you buy into Tim Burton's macabre version of the world, you're probably hoping his vision for the afterlife is an inaccurate one. His cinematic stylings use the notion of life after death as being a bureaucratic nightmare. And it makes sense, we have enough trouble keeping things running smoothly for the living... Imagine trying to coordinate everyone who’d ever lived. “Beetlejuice” actually makes afterlife as a ghost look like a lot of fun. No one likes seeing new owners move into their old home, and terrifying them would be an absolute pleasure. But that desolate desert wasteland, populated by massive claymation sandworms, is enough to keep a body clinging to life as long as humanly possible.

If there’s one thing that Peter Jackson knows his way around, it’s special effects. He’s also clearly got a fascination with the undead and the afterlife, an idea he explored in his 1996 horror comedy, “The Frighteners.” But in his 2009 film adaptation of a bestselling novel, Peter Jackson takes us into the “In-Between,” an otherworldly transitional space between heaven and earth, where Susie Salmon, played by the talented Saoirse Ronan, comes to terms with her fate. The “In-Between” is stunning to say the least - a best case scenario psychedelic trip where one can make peace with their past life.

Having died in a car crash, Chris Nielsen’s spirit remains, wanting to comfort his wife. He soon realizes, however, that any attempt to interact with her will only cause her emotional distress. Moving on, he finds the afterlife to be a subjective place, susceptible to the influence of his imagination. In this version of the afterlife, heaven is relative to the individual - an idea beautifully represented in the film. His peaceful existence is interrupted by the suicide of his wife, however, who rather than joining him in heaven, is sent to hell. Choosing his wife over paradise, he journeys to hell to save her, a place as individually tailored to the dead as its heavenly counterpart.