ABSTRACT
This opening chapter identifies the growing interest in the afterlife on the part of young and old, scholar and non-scholar, and across religious and cultural divides. It recognizes this as shown by scholarly surveys carried in the UK, the US and Australia, by the afterlife as the theme of many, especially young adult, novels and in contemporary, popular cinema. It is with its appearance in this last medium that this present work is primarily concerned. The chapter shows how this work will explore how the matters of an intermediate space and of the continuity of time, space and personal identity between death and new life, of the nature of afterlife existence, and of contact between living and dead are addressed in contemporary film.
