In a race against time, Anna Taylor insists she’s not dead. The strange funeral director spends her
remaining days making her wonder if she has truly ever lived, or if she’s still alive after all.
Eliot Deacon, a local mortician who owns a funeral home, whispers to the dead whom he
prepares for their funeral. He does his best to make them look as if they're only sleeping after
he secretly leads them into the afterlife. That same morning, after an intimate moment, Paul
notices that his girlfriend, Anna, is dissatisfied and tries to talk to her about it. But his distant
partner denies her problem as her nose bleeds. Later at school, middle school teacher Anna
witnesses Jack, her student, being bullied by his classmates and stops them.
Concurrently, Mr. Deacon prepares for a service at his funeral home.
When Anna is about to go home, the lights along the school's hallway start to flicker one by one,
so she runs towards the exit in terror while being chased by darkness. Unfortunately,
the doors are locked, so she fearfully calls out into the dark hall.
Suddenly, Jack turns on the lights and opens the door for his teacher, which she claims to
be locked a few seconds earlier. Overlooking the unusual incident,
Anna tells Jack she's attending her old piano teacher's funeral. Her student insists
on tagging along, but his teacher refuses and tells him to wait for his mother.
Then, Anna goes to the pharmacy to refill her medicine when she decides to get her hair dyed
at the parlor across the street. Arriving at the funeral, she bids her
condolences to the late pianist's wife and goes up to the open casket. Suddenly,
she sees the dead's mouth move, so she blinks in shock but sees him as peaceful and unmoving.
Her reaction seems to get Eliot's attention, and he watches her through his window as she
cries in frustration and drives away. Later at a restaurant, Paul waits for Anna
and holds an engagement ring box before putting it back in his coat. His girlfriend arrives late and
Paul comments on her unusual red hair. Then, Anna notices the expensive wine her
boyfriend ordered, asking for the occasion. Paul tells her about his transfer at work and
is about to propose for marriage when Anna mistakenly hints that he's leaving her.
The couple argues and his girlfriend storms off while an equally exasperated Paul calls her crazy,
just like her mother. Regardless, he follows her outside and fails
to stop her from driving away. Distressed, Anna cries and speeds
off the road while the rain starts to pour. She drives by a truck and reaches for her
phone when she swerves off the road. Hours later in a morgue, Eliot attends
to his client and uncovers Anna, who lies unconscious on an autopsy table. He begins
to remove her accessories and is about to tear her red dress when she wakes.
Patiently, he informs the terrified woman of the accident and tells her that she's dead. However,
Anna protests that she isn't, so Eliot shows her death certificate,
which details the cause of her passing. Then, Eliot proceeds to clean the gash on
her forehead while he prepares her body for her funeral. Anna denies her death repeatedly,
while the mortician says that all the corpses have said the same and leaves to let her rest.
The next day, Eliot gets a bottle of hydrogen bromide, a muscle relaxant,
when Anna's phone rings. Paul tries to reconcile and leaves her voicemails while
Eliot ignores them and places Anna's bag of belongings in his closet, among others.
Meanwhile, Paul barges into one of the classrooms and looks for his girlfriend.
A substitute teacher tells him she didn't come to work, nor did she call, so he leaves confused.
In Eliot's home, he talks to the deceased Mr. Hutton about Anna through his picture,
which the mortician pins on his wall. At the same time, Paul drives to his
girlfriend’s house to look for her. His girlfriend’s mother reveals that she died
in a car accident last night. Stunned by the news, Paul denies Anna’s death, while Mrs. Taylor blames
him for letting her drive in the bad weather. Tear-stricken, Paul stares at her in regret.
At the morgue, Anna pleads to be freed while Eliot tells her that she's still in denial of her death.
The mortician starts stitching her wound, whereas Anna worries about the numbness she feels.
Abruptly, the doorbell rings, which Eliot says to be Anna's mother. He
injects her with a muscle relaxant to stop them from stiffening before covering her.
Up in Eliot's house, Mrs. Taylor insists on seeing her daughter even
if she's still unprepared. So, Eliot leads her down the morgue and uncovers Anna.
Disappointed, Mrs. Taylor wonders who will look after her now that her daughter has
passed. Eliot guarantees to have Anna prepared by Friday, as requested. Before leaving, Mrs. Taylor
tells him to dye her hair back to brunette. Meanwhile in Jack's home, he cuts a clipping
about his teacher's accident from the newspaper while his mother ignores him.
Back at the morgue, Anna gets up from the table and finds that she can't
feel her pulse. She gets off and tries to call for help inside the locked room.
Meanwhile, Eliot confirms with the priest about Anna's burial
over the phone and sees Paul in his driveway. Eliot greets him outside and recognizes him as the
town's lawyer, whereas Paul introduces himself as Anna's fiancé. The mortician doubts this and
mentions that Anna doesn’t have a ring. Even so, Paul insists on seeing Anna, but the mortician
refuses since he's not family of the deceased. Down the morgue, Anna hears her enraged boyfriend
and pounds at the door with all her strength, calling for Paul, who drives away in defeat.
Later, Eliot is back at the morgue with Anna curled in the corner. The mortician
clears away his tools while Anna blames him for her death and calls him crazy
for claiming to be the only one who sees her. Displeased, Eliot asks her height for her coffin
and locks her again in the morgue. At a police station, Paul asks for Tom,
the police chief, but he isn't there. Paul grabs a drink instead but sees
the impound room and sneaks in to look for his girlfriend’s car.
When he finds the wrecked and bloody car, he sits inside and sees the bloody bobblehead
move. Suddenly, he sees Anna looking at her from outside the car when Tom grabs
him which snaps him back to reality. Paul asks his friend for help to let him
see Anna but fails. Remorseful, he grips the bobblehead hard and walks away.
Back in the morgue, Anna grabs the autopsy scissors from the table and walks to the
doors. Then, she sees a hand peeking from a covered body on another table and
uncovers a dead old woman, Mrs. Whitehall. When Eliot enters, he sees the uncovered body
and tells Anna not to be scared since the dead can't harm her. Then, Anna attacks the mortician
and runs to the locked door. She defends herself and swears to kill Eliot who encourages her.
Unable to hurt him, Anna lowers her hand and insists that the doctors made a mistake
of pronouncing her dead, but the mortician interjects. He claims that he has a gift which
enables him to talk to souls in between life and death and help them make a transition.
The mortician then leads her back to the table despite Anna's complaints. When she still insists,
Eliot rages and asks if her life is worth living for her to fight for it. He reminds
her of her upcoming funeral in two days and leaves Anna once more.
Suddenly, Anna wakes up face-to-face with Mrs. Whitehall, who claims that the young
woman isn't ready. She notices the open steel chamber from the side of the room and approaches
it when a hand pulls her in. Inside, she hears voices and meets her younger self
who says that she's better off dead. Then, Anna wakes from her nightmare and
thrashes the room in frustration. Up at the funeral home, Eliot arranges
the flowers for Mrs. Whitehall's funeral and calls Jack to help him, who thought that it
is Ms. Taylor's funeral. As Eliot enters the morgue,
he gets infuriated by the mess Anna made. Meanwhile, Paul wakes up from a nightmare
where Anna holds her beating heart in her hands as she bleeds.
Back in the morgue, Eliot hangs Anna's funeral dress and leaves to return a hospital stretcher.
She steals his keys and attempts to open the doors while Eliot fills his gas tank on his way home.
When Anna opens the front doors, Eliot arrives just in time so she runs back inside. She grabs a
knife in defense and finds the doors locked again so she runs upstairs. Accidentally, she drops the
knife which Eliot hears and follows the sound. Anna manages to call a drunk Paul,
who answers and thinks that he's being pranked so he ends it immediately.
Eliot finds Anna and says that he's the only one who can hear
her and that she's only hurting Paul. The scared woman still refuses to believe him,
so he shows her a mirror where she sees her corpse-like reflection. Finally,
Anna is convinced that she's dead. Then, Eliot sees Jack outside his house, staring at Anna
through the window, which pleases the mortician. He looks at a crestfallen Anna and wipes the
moisture on the mirror due to her breathing. Back at the morgue, Eliot washes off her hair
dye and cuts her clothes when Anna opens her eyes and sees Paul beside her in bed. As she tells him
about her dream, a flash of light gets her up and she sees Paul turn the lights on and off. He asks
him if she loved him when the phone rings. Anna wakes up from her dream back in the
morgue and wonders why her pain never ends, even after death.
Meanwhile, Paul retrieves Anna's belongings from her classroom. He looks back to their
memories upon discovering a picture she took of him from one of their dates.
In the morgue, Anna watches as the mortician stitches up another corpse, Mr. Miller. Feeling
weaker, Anna gets escorted back to the table while Eliot says that her time is near and he
injects her with the chemical once more. Back at school, Jack tells Paul that he saw
Anna standing in the funeral home wearing a red dress, but the man ignores this. The
kid insists that he must save her and questions his love for her. Triggered, Paul smacks the boy
across the face while the teachers stop him. Meanwhile, Eliot pins a picture of Mrs.Whitehall
on his wall when he sees a police mobile outside. The police officer wants to look
at his brother's body, Mr. Miller, so Eliot leads him down the morgue.
The police ask for a few minutes alone with his brother which Eliot permits. But then,
he goes to Anna's body and touches her when Eliot enters, startling the officer,
who apologizes and leaves immediately. Angered, Eliot tells an unresponsive Mr.
Miller that he's dead and puts on his makeup like a clown.
Meanwhile, Jack is back at the funeral home when he meets Eliot,
who tells him that he has a gift that lets him talk to the dead, just like the mortician.
Then, Paul sees a red dress in a store which reminds him that Anna is wearing the same color
the morning she died, just like Jack said. He hurriedly drives to the funeral home,
where he tells Eliot that someone saw his girlfriend. Eliot says that kids have vivid
imaginations and assures him that she's dead. However, he believes otherwise and trespasses
inside the mortician's home. He calls out Anna's name and pounds at the morgue's
door while asking Eliot to let him in. On the other side, Anna hears her boyfriend’s
pleas, but she has already surrendered and quietly remains lying on the slab.
Nonetheless, Paul hasn't given up when Eliot consoles the grieving lawyer and claims that he's
still in denial of her death. He threatens Paul that he will call the cops, but the lawyer leaves
and reports to the station first. Upon his leave, Eliot decreases the temperature in the morgue.
Arriving at the station, he learns that Eliot has called ahead and reported Paul.
Tom shows his friend the medical examiner's report on Anna's death but Paul insists,
especially after learning they never saw the body and assumes that the mortician drugged
Anna. Another cop seconds that there are drugs such as hydrogen bromide which lead to total
paralysis. But Police Miller confesses that he's seen Anna's dead body in the morgue.
Hysterical, Paul denies their claims and remembers the call he received from Anna.
Hearing this, Tom worries for his friend and says that he'll get the closure he
wants at the funeral the following day. Back at the morgue, Eliot cleans and dresses
Anna while she looks back on her life, regretful. She says that she pushes away Paul's love for her
until he's given up. Then, Eliot opens the doors and gives her a chance to walk out.
However, Anna sees herself walk towards her house and sees her remorseless mother and
boyfriend watch her get buried. She then opens her eyes and backs
away in fear of the outside while Eliot closes the doors once more.
The following day at the graveyard, Eliot measures a hole for Anna's coffin when Jack watches him. He
tells the kid that he's the only one who sees people, such as Anna, who waste their lives
and suffocate the living, so he buries them. Meanwhile, Anna lies peacefully in her coffin
and asks Eliot to let her see herself for the last time. He allows this and holds a
mirror in front of her. When Anna sighs, she notices the moisture her breath makes on the
mirror and realizes that she's still alive. However, Eliot denies this again and injects
her with hydrogen bromide to make her still and take her picture.
At the funeral, people come and mourn Anna's death. When it's Paul's turn to approach the
casket, he slips a ring on her finger, and flinches when he feels her cold body. Then,
he finally kisses her goodbye. At the side, Eliot is alarmed and
closes the casket right after Paul finishes. In Eliot's room, he talks to Anna through her
picture while he pins it on the wall of his collection. He then watches
through his window as she gets buried alive. At the funeral reception at Mrs. Taylor's home,
Paul drinks excessively while Eliot approaches and calls him out. Paul still believes that
Anna is not dead, so Eliot taunts and encourages him to make sure whether the
love of his life is really alive or not. Disbelieved, a drunk Paul rushes to the
cemetery in his car when he meets a truck on his way and swerves off the road.
When he opens his eyes, he continues driving while he hears sirens pass him by. He then makes a stop
at the cemetery, where he digs Anna's grave and carries her out. The couple shares a hug,
and Anna finally professes her love when Paul hears a noise. Anna tells him they're
Eliot's scissors as he sets them on the table. In a flash, Paul lies wounded and unable to move
on the morgue slab. Eliot tells him that he's dead, which Paul denies and continues accusing
him of burying Anna alive. The mortician reveals that he's unable to reach the cemetery as he got
into a car accident, just like Anna did. Then, Jack hands Eliot a sharp dissecting
instrument and impales it onto his body which makes Paul lose consciousness.