Peter Morgan (writer of The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) has penned an iconoclastic script that has lured American icon Clint Eastwood away from his usual directorial terrain. Hereafter is an eerie examination of the afterlife and marks a considerable change of pace for Eastwood as a director. Despite its fascination with the supernatural, Hereafter is very much reflective of contemporary fears, and Eastwood does a superb job sketching the anxieties and insecurities felt by his characters.

Hereafter traces three parallel stories about a triumvirate of people who have all been affected by death in different ways. The film begins with a powerful sequence that portrays one of the character’s brushes with death in chilling detail; her beachside resort is hit by a tsunami. A famous French television reporter, Marie (Cécile de France) is traumatized by the event and, given a leave of absence from her job, decides to write a book about the experience. Meanwhile, George (Matt Damon), an American factory worker, tries to escape from the fact that he is somehow able to communicate with the dead, while resisting his brother’s demands that the two of them go into business to capitalize on his powers. And the final part of the triad centres around two young twins living in England. Their mother is a drug addict and the two children try to keep social services at bay until a terrible accident brings death into their lives.

Eastwood follows the ups-and-downs of each of the socio-economically distinct narratives, before bringing his three stories together in a powerful denouement. Roving around the world – London, Chamonix, San Francisco, Hawaii – Hereafter is a disquieting work about death made by a director whose reputation is second to none, and yet refuses to sit on his laurels.