Defending Your Life (1991)
The first true story of what happens after you die.
Is there love after death? After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia offers him a chance to finally feel alive.
In Defending Your Life, consciousness is carried by the dead — a plane of “afterlife courtroom”. The story fights on E8/E10 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing afterlife, judgment, fear, bureaucracy, reincarnation.
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
Also bends a rule of reality
Other films that change a standing rule of their world — ranked first by those bending it at the same rung.
Soul (2020)alters at E8 · same rung · rigorous
Insidious (2011)alters at E8 · same rung · loose
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2007)alters at E8 · same rung · loose
After Life (1999)alters at E8 · same rung · rigorous
Ghostbusters (1984)alters at E8 · same rung · loose
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)alters at E8 · same rung · looseAlso hides consciousness here
Other films that move a human interior onto the same kind of thing.
Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017)consciousness in the dead · afterlife tribunal
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)consciousness in the dead · spectral invasion
Carnival of Souls (1962)consciousness in the dead · spectral limbo
The Legend of Hell House (1973)consciousness in the dead · haunted house afterlife
Beetlejuice (1988)consciousness in the dead · afterlife office
Ghostbusters (2016)consciousness in the dead · paranormal nycSame subject, different mask
The same preoccupations carried by a different kind of thing — grief told through the dead, an animal, a machine.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)consciousness carried elsewhere · bureaucracy, fear
Insidious: The Last Key (2018)consciousness in monsters · afterlife, fear
Drag Me to Hell (2009)consciousness in monsters · bureaucracy, fear
The Gendarme and the Creatures from Outer Space (1979)consciousness in machines · bureaucracy, fear
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)consciousness in aliens · fear
Sing (2016)consciousness in animals · fear
