A surprisingly moving story directed by Peter Jackson.
In 1973, a girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is murdered by a serial killer (Stanley Tucci). But rather than vanish from the story, Susie narrates what happens next from an “in-between” realm between Heaven and Earth. She explores the impact of her death on her family, who she seems able to reach and influence in subtle ways. That family is played, affectingly, by Rachel Weisz (Susie’s mother), Mark Wahlberg (her father), Susan Sarandon (her grandmother) and Rose McIver (her sister).
It’s often an uneasy mix – and this is presumably deliberate – between the gruesome details of a serial killer at work and the almost whimsical dreamscapes that Susie now inhabits. She walks through psychedelic, oversaturated worlds that sometimes threaten to turn the film into a fantasy romp. But these sequences just about work because they can be seen to mirror the perceptions of a 14-year-old struggling to comprehend the enormity of what has happened to her.
If you can get past the slightly jarring combination of gritty and fantastical, you can engage with some profound questions about life and death.
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