Here is an American-made documentary that’s a part of the rising flood of faith-based films; it comprises folks recounting visions of an afterlife they skilled whereas technically useless. Regardless of being a documentary, it’s little completely different from function narrative movies corresponding to QAnon-adjacent child-trafficking conspiracy-fest Sound of Freedom or the upcoming hagiography Cabrini, each of which concerned After Dying’s producers Angel Studios.
Regardless of interviewees’ conviction that their souls left their our bodies and glimpsed one other world, we aren’t introduced with any proof – positive, the film-makers deploy a number of onscreen graphics to be able to reassure us of their topics’ bona fides, however solemn music, moody lighting and dramatic re-creations don’t simply make issues magically factual. And even particularly persuasive.
Additionally it is maybe vital that the interviewees right here – who make ethereal generalisations about how these experiences occur everywhere in the world to individuals who observe many alternative faiths – are largely all white, American and steeped in Christianity. There’s one lady (Pam Reynolds, seen in archive footage), however the bulk of them are males. These embody former pilot Dale Black, who claims to have seen his personal useless physique after an air crash, automotive accident survivor Don Piper and the aptly named Howard Storm, who not solely noticed each heaven and hell however bought an viewers with Jesus himself (a ghostly penumbra within the movie’s many trippy animations).
As one medical man notes, all these experiences are subjective; they’re proof, however not precise proof, that interviewees aren’t experiencing delusions. However, he notes ominously, if there’s sufficient proof, possibly that’s pretty much as good as proof! Yeah, possibly. Or possibly not. The rhetoric right here is slippery as a Pentecostal snake bathed in holy snake oil, to the purpose the place you nearly need to admire the film-makers’ tenacity – particularly with regards to swirly-whirly visible results displaying near-abstract pearly gates and deities presenting themselves as rays of luminosity, like celestial lightbulbs.
