This horror film made it onto the list because I saw that it starred Annette O’Toole and John Glover and I am an absolute sucker for my favorite Smallville actors. Imagine my surprise when I then saw that Cassidy Freeman, another Smallville alum, also showed up in the movie. God bless whoever was doing the casting for this movie and I’m just sorry that they couldn’t get John Schneider or Michael Rosenbaum to be in it. Anyway, that’s apparently all it takes for me to be interested in your movie, I guess.

Miles is an adult living in LA that has a laundry list of phobias that make it difficult to deal with his everyday life with most of them stemming from an overarching fear of dying. He decides that rather than spending years in therapy, the best way to get over this fear is to find definitive proof of life after death. To accomplish this he puts out an ad in the paper and online offering $30,000 to anyone that can offer him incontestable proof that We Go On. He, obviously, gets hundreds of people responding but manages to narrow it down to less than a handful of people that he thinks might have a legitimate case to make. When he goes on the journey to find what happens when we die, he might not be able to handle what it is that he learns.

This was a lot of fun. Annette O’Toole does a great job as Charlotte, Miles’ mother that is both entirely skeptical of any of this afterlife stuff but fully willing to support her son, no matter what. Clark Freeman does a good job as Miles being someone that is so desperate and obsessed but still this very likeable goober at the same time. Him being Cassidy Freeman’s brother also makes sense now for why she and perhaps the other Smallville folks managed to end up in this movie. I’m only sad John Glover’s role in the movie is only for a small part of it but watching him get threatened by O’Toole is like a warm hug. There aren’t really any bad performances in the whole thing and even the weakest ones are still fine. It’s always nice to come out the other side of a horror movie without having any moments of eyerolling nonsense.

The tension in the film gradually builds in an interesting way with each new person that Miles goes to see on his quest. Each one that he visits adds something to the plot that becomes relevant later on even if we don’t see them again. Even the ending of the movie manages to play off of something that Charlotte says in an earlier scene. It is a very clever movie that doesn’t let anything go to waste in the script. Perhaps the most unbelievable thing in it is that a guy that hasn’t driven a car before and has a phobia of cars would be able to look at a driving tutorial and then have his first time driving be in L.A. of all places. Like, sorry, your ass is going to get in an accident in 3 blocks, never mind trying to get on the highway.

I did this mostly for the Smallville gag but this ended up being a really enjoyable watch. Definitely recommend checking it out.

Score: 4 out of 5