Directed by John Meyers and adapted from the award-winning novel by Jim Crace.

BEING DEAD focuses on a troubled middle-aged couple, Joseph and Celice Adkins (Lunis Roache and Elizabeth Marvel), who decide to head back to a place and time of their youth known as Lullaby Rise, where they reflect on loss and relationships of times past. Meanwhile, their troubled daughter Syl, who has just been fired from her job as a waitress, is also struggling to come to terms with the relationship that she has had with her parents and inevitably the generation gap and conflicts that are inherent in emotionally charged family situations have come to a head.

In their younger days, Joseph and Celice began a romance, much to the chagrin of a fellow female student who had a thing for Celice, prompted by Celice’s decision to join Joseph in his research about a new rare species of bird. Past and present memories prompted by the revisit to the location begin to thrive in Celice’s mind, to the point that she misses an important lecture for students at the university where she teaches, which a fellow lecturer takes in her place. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure is drifting around…..

Even if you are not original source material, you may suspect after viewing this that something has been slightly lost in the translation to the big screen, not least in that the multiple strands sometimes impose on one another and do affect the emotional dynamic of each of the stories here, diluting the overall intention of a well-meaning but disjointed adaptation.

The title does give a little of its’ objective away and going into it, you think that this might be more of a supernatural affair a la SIXTH SENSE or any number of ghostly yarns we have seen in the horror genre in recent years. The truth is that on their own, any one of the plot strands would work very well and make a competently achievable piece of work. Performances and visual tone are fine enough, but it is a little bit of a slow burner that requires a little bit of patience and observation.

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