***SPOILERS*** Modern Film-Noir murder mystery that covers 42 years,1948-1990, and two lifetimes. Grace, Emma Thompson,has been in this Catholic sanitarium, Saint Audrey's, since she was found wandering aimlessly on the streets of L.A. With the church not being able to keep or care for her any longer due to her deteriorating mental condition the church's administrator Father Thimothy, Richard Easton,calls a former parishioner Private eye Mike Church, Kenneth Branagh. Church is to find out just who this Grace, a name given to her by the church, really is.
Putting an ad in the local L.A newspapers Church is immediately contacted by antique dealer Franklin Madson, Derek Jacobi. Madson dabbles in the occult and is experienced in the science of past-life regression; regressing persons back to their past lives through hypnosis. Madson puts Grace into a trance and regresses her back in time. It's then that Grace claims that in her previous existence she was a woman named Margrate Struss back in 1949. It was back then in 1949 that she was murdered by her husband Roman. Roman was a failing Hollywood musical composer and with his money, that he inherited from his first wife back in Germany, gone he was just about to have a nervous breakdown. Romans also suspected that Margaret was cheating on him by having an affair with newspaper reporter Gray Baker, Andy Garcia. One evening Roman just lost it and took out a pair of scissors brutally murdering Margaret.
This amazing revelation, by Grace, is later confirmed through old newspapers clippings that also brought out that not only was there a Margaret and Roman Struss, back in L.A in 1948-49, but that she was also brutally murdered by her husband Roman.
Mike and his assistant Pete(Wayne Knight), who later in the film makes one of the most jolting as well as unsuspecting guest appearances in motion picture history, get in touch with former psychiatrist and now grocery store owner Cozy Carlisle, Robin Williams, an expert in past-life regression. Cralisle, who was drummed out of his profession for having sex with one of his patients, tells them that past-life regressions do in fact have some truth to them and what Grace has been saying under hypnosis could very well have happened to her in a past life.
The movie then takes on an almost supernatural angle to it and as its story slowly starts unfolding it becomes apparent to everyone that Grace is telling the truth but there's only one slight misrepresentation in her story! Grace wasn't Margrate Struss in her previous existence and the person who was wasn't murdered by Roman! There are surprises galore in this movie about murder madness and reincarnation and an ending that will surly blow you, like almost everyone else watching it, away.
The movie is so well put together that your never allowed, by it's writer and director, to realize exactly what's going on until almost the very last five or so minutes. It's then where the truth about Grace/Margrate suddenly explodes right in your face leaving you, like it did both Grace & Mike Church, in a state of shock.
Crossing different lives and time periods "Dead Again" in its concluding moments comes to a startling and paranormal rendezvous. It's at that point when the past suddenly catches up with the present and the mind boggling results of that time/space related conjunction become truly astonishing.
Putting an ad in the local L.A newspapers Church is immediately contacted by antique dealer Franklin Madson, Derek Jacobi. Madson dabbles in the occult and is experienced in the science of past-life regression; regressing persons back to their past lives through hypnosis. Madson puts Grace into a trance and regresses her back in time. It's then that Grace claims that in her previous existence she was a woman named Margrate Struss back in 1949. It was back then in 1949 that she was murdered by her husband Roman. Roman was a failing Hollywood musical composer and with his money, that he inherited from his first wife back in Germany, gone he was just about to have a nervous breakdown. Romans also suspected that Margaret was cheating on him by having an affair with newspaper reporter Gray Baker, Andy Garcia. One evening Roman just lost it and took out a pair of scissors brutally murdering Margaret.
This amazing revelation, by Grace, is later confirmed through old newspapers clippings that also brought out that not only was there a Margaret and Roman Struss, back in L.A in 1948-49, but that she was also brutally murdered by her husband Roman.
Mike and his assistant Pete(Wayne Knight), who later in the film makes one of the most jolting as well as unsuspecting guest appearances in motion picture history, get in touch with former psychiatrist and now grocery store owner Cozy Carlisle, Robin Williams, an expert in past-life regression. Cralisle, who was drummed out of his profession for having sex with one of his patients, tells them that past-life regressions do in fact have some truth to them and what Grace has been saying under hypnosis could very well have happened to her in a past life.
The movie then takes on an almost supernatural angle to it and as its story slowly starts unfolding it becomes apparent to everyone that Grace is telling the truth but there's only one slight misrepresentation in her story! Grace wasn't Margrate Struss in her previous existence and the person who was wasn't murdered by Roman! There are surprises galore in this movie about murder madness and reincarnation and an ending that will surly blow you, like almost everyone else watching it, away.
The movie is so well put together that your never allowed, by it's writer and director, to realize exactly what's going on until almost the very last five or so minutes. It's then where the truth about Grace/Margrate suddenly explodes right in your face leaving you, like it did both Grace & Mike Church, in a state of shock.
Crossing different lives and time periods "Dead Again" in its concluding moments comes to a startling and paranormal rendezvous. It's at that point when the past suddenly catches up with the present and the mind boggling results of that time/space related conjunction become truly astonishing.