The IMDb does not provide a great deal of information about this 1995 film except that it has an 'R' MPAA rating, has achieved an impressive IMDb viewers rating of 1.4 stars and has a theme based on the fantasies which may be experienced by anyone hovering between life and death. In the past I have watched one or two films with similar themes which provoked some quite challenging thoughts so, when I saw this was scheduled for showing on a local TV channel recently, I decided to take a chance and watch it despite the low rating. A few comments follow, but my principal interest is to see whether other IMDb users can help fill in some of the gaps currently existing on this database.
This movie was based on a series of sequences showing a young woman undergoing a preliminary time of death interview by a 'Guardian' responsible for assessing her life. These were filmed reasonably adequately using soft focus, low contrast, muted colours and lots of swirling mist. But all of the associated flashback sequences were totally unacceptable, their quality was appalling and even worse they differed so drastically amongst each other that the viewer was left to constantly fiddle with contrast, chroma, brightness, gamma or hue controls every few moments. If this was the fault of the film it deserves to be very quickly forgotten, but producers put a lot of effort and money into creating a film and I cannot think that this is so. It seems more likely that the TV station concerned transmitted it with all their video controls badly mis-set. Despite these problems I felt it had the potential to be a marginally adequate minor film and, more important, that its final sequences provided an unexpected ending which was challenging enough to deserve mention here. But as I saw it on television the quality was way below what would be expected from any film destined for public release. It seems unlikely that there will be a DVD release soon, and I would be interested to know whether this film has been previously shown in a more acceptable form elsewhere. As seen, it was reminiscent of the output from a short film school project, although its R rating suggests that it was not made exclusively for TV and at some point must have also received a cinema release.
Warning:! Although this film may possibly be worth more, on the basis of what I actually saw its present IMDb rating of 1.4 might be judged by some viewers as a little generous.
This movie was based on a series of sequences showing a young woman undergoing a preliminary time of death interview by a 'Guardian' responsible for assessing her life. These were filmed reasonably adequately using soft focus, low contrast, muted colours and lots of swirling mist. But all of the associated flashback sequences were totally unacceptable, their quality was appalling and even worse they differed so drastically amongst each other that the viewer was left to constantly fiddle with contrast, chroma, brightness, gamma or hue controls every few moments. If this was the fault of the film it deserves to be very quickly forgotten, but producers put a lot of effort and money into creating a film and I cannot think that this is so. It seems more likely that the TV station concerned transmitted it with all their video controls badly mis-set. Despite these problems I felt it had the potential to be a marginally adequate minor film and, more important, that its final sequences provided an unexpected ending which was challenging enough to deserve mention here. But as I saw it on television the quality was way below what would be expected from any film destined for public release. It seems unlikely that there will be a DVD release soon, and I would be interested to know whether this film has been previously shown in a more acceptable form elsewhere. As seen, it was reminiscent of the output from a short film school project, although its R rating suggests that it was not made exclusively for TV and at some point must have also received a cinema release.
Warning:! Although this film may possibly be worth more, on the basis of what I actually saw its present IMDb rating of 1.4 might be judged by some viewers as a little generous.
