Here After

Claire Hiller [Connie Britton] is a Catholic schoolteacher living in Italy who hurries to the hospital when her teenage daughter Robin Hiller [Freya Hannan-Mills], a mute piano prodigy, is critically injured in a bike accident. In the hospital chapel, Claire clings to a keepsake bracelet she found on Robin and prays for a miracle. When Claire and her estranged ex-husband Luca [Giovanni Cirfiera] reach Robin’s room, they learn their daughter is officially pronounced dead. In a desperate moment, Claire slides the bracelet onto Robin’s wrist, and Robin suddenly comes back to life, her brain activity pulsing after being brain dead for 20 minutes.

Robin begins speaking for the first time since she was five, but the revival is shadowed by troubling changes. She starts displaying alarming behavior at home and at school, including choking a classmate, which leads to her expulsion. At the same time, Claire starts experiencing vivid, unsettling visions—inscriptions of insults appearing on papers handed in by students—and an old scar on her forearm begins bleeding again. Claire seeks medical answers for Robin, but Dr. Stancik finds nothing physically wrong during testing.

On their drive home, Robin cryptically asks Claire, greater than a normal concern, “> How come you didn’t ask if I saw her?” Claire recounts the moment to Luca, who dismisses it as Robin not remembering the incident. Desperate for guidance, Claire turns to the church and reaches out to Father Sergio [Alessandro Bressanello], who simply passes the matter back to Luca. Luca ends up taking Robin to live with his new family temporarily, creating a new layer of distance and concern for Claire.

Claire joins a support group for survivors of near-death experiences, where the group’s leader Dr. Ben Romano [Tommaso Basili] discusses the afterlife as a realm shaped by repressed emotional trauma. A disturbing vision follows: Robin seems to try to drown Claire in a pool, a frightful image that Claire survives with the help of her friend Viv [Babetida Sadjo]. When Luca calls to say Robin has gone missing, the tension deepens.

The film then delves into a traumatic memory from Claire’s past. She recalls driving away with her twin daughters Robin and Rose after a bitter argument with Luca when they were five. Frustrated by Rose’s backseat tantrum, Claire swerves and crashes into water. She survives and saves Robin, but Rose drowns, leaving Claire with a long-lasting forearm scar and Robin mute for years. This memory fuels Claire’s theory that guilt and past sins can become personal demons, a theme she discusses with Dr. Romano, emphasizing that her family avoids talking about Rose.

As Robin is located again, she arrives at the hospital in a comatose state with her body slowly decomposing. In the face of despair, Claire contemplates suicide by overdosing on pills and submerging herself in an ice bath. Her near-death experience becomes a doorway to memory as she relives the car accident with her twins. In the vision, Claire reunites with Rose, and the two Claires share a healing moment—one that leads Rose to place Claire and Robin’s hands together before turning toward the water in the hereafter.

Ben rushes to Claire’s residence with paramedics, and they manage to revive her. At roughly the same moment, Robin regains consciousness in the hospital. In the wake of these miraculous recoversies, life begins to settle back toward normal for the family, even as the film leaves questions about the line between trauma, memory, and the afterlife lingering in the air.

Last Updated: December 30, 2025 at 11:34