Review of Film and the Afterlife by David Rankin

David Rankin is an Australian-based academic and ordained Uniting Church minister examining pop culture ‘cinematic representations of the afterlife, of post-death existence’ (p. 5). Why? Not just because the topic is universally compelling, but because ‘film does have something of real value and worth to offer with which religious and theological studies might engage’ (p. 2). Consequently, he examined twenty predominantly white, post-World War II, Judeo-Christian, English language films (16x American, 3x British, 1x multinational) spanning 1946–2013 that he argued a priori demonstrated ‘a reasonably consistent, coherent, credible and engaging representation of an afterlife and one which will resonate in part at least with something of such representations in various religious representations’ (p. 2; my emphasis). And so, in a random and undisciplined way, Rankin liberally dipped into the Babylonian Talmud, Judaism, Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Hinduism,Confessions, spiritualism, Catechism of the Catholic Church and appropriated bits-and-pieces for his chosen film emphasis.