After his last role as the rugby player who defeats apartheid, Matt Damon teams up with director Clint Eastwood again to play George, a seemingly average Joe who has a special connection with the Other Side in the newly released trailer for Hereafter. But will it be scarily good or just screamingly awful?
We've certainly seen plenty of reluctant psychic/mediums/clairvoyants all mouth variations on the same "You don't understand, it's not a blessing, it's a curse!" line that Matt Damon gets saddled with, so I do worry that Hereafter may have little original to say. And if there's any subject that can bring out the gauzy mawkish vices Eastwood has as a director, it's the heavy-duty topic of death, life and the Great Unknown.
But the trailer certainly looks gorgeous, particularly the images of the 2004 tsunami, which take on a certain terrible shimmery beauty. We'll have to wait and see which Eastwood showed up to direct Hereafter -- the subtle, quietly sympathetic director of Letters from Iwo Jima, or the bombastic traffic cop of assorted histrionics from Mystic River.
VERDICT: Some signs of life, but not yet fully alive.