The nature of life and death is a subject that has kept philosophers, writers, artists, and even filmmakers in content material for a long time now, and that’s exactly what Hereafter will look to deal with. The folks out at Warner Brothers sent over a copy for me to review, and it’s going to be a long, long, and terribly strange journey through life, death, and everything that’s connected to either.

Hereafter follows a normal working joe–okay, more like working George–who has a special connection to the afterlife stemming from his childhood. Meanwhile, Marie, a French journalist, just got a whole lot closer to death than she ever wanted to, very nearly drowning in a bizarre tidal wave incident at a seaside resort. And then, an English schoolboy loses the person closest to him, and that makes him long for answers. All three will come in contact with that titular Hereafter, and it will change all of them in ways they can scarcely imagine.

Fair warning: substantial portions of this movie are in French. You will have no choice but to read subtitles. And for those of you who want to read subtitles, they only half work for some reason. I had a tough time getting them to work on my Blu-ray player.

As awesome as it is that this is a Clint Eastwood movie, I still found it a spectacularly dull, arduous, and self-important journey of pomposity that’s trying, desperately, to be some kind of art film and instead comes off as a gigantic, disjointed waste of time. Yes, yes, death is creepy and coming close to death has an effect on people; I’ve seen a horror movie before, Clint, I know what survivor’s guilt is.

It’s never a good sign when you can’t spot a coherent narrative after the halfway mark of a film, and that’s exactly what will happen with Hereafter. Hereafter spends entirely too much time engaging in pointless navel-gazing and not near enough time actually telling a story. Worse, when it actually does indulge the mere mortals who came looking for a plot, they’ve got three of them running at the same time. What little plot here actually goes into the movie is now split three ways, guaranteeing you won’t spend much useful time with any one character before segueing off into another one.

I hope I never have to see Hereafter again, because frankly, this one is sufficiently boring that being “bored to death” isn’t just a pithy and vaguely ironic assessment so much as it is a distinct literal possibility.

Special note, though–getting your hands on the Blu-ray will also get you access to the extended version of The Eastwood Factor, which makes this a really good value because you’ll get a terrible movie and the extended version of a good one in the same package.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands the dull, pompous, and outright inane Hereafter a three out of ten for saying absolutely nothing new or important and taking over two hours to do so.