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Plot
Eliot Deacon owns a funeral home and talks softly to the corpses he prepares for burial. Middle school teacher Anna Taylor meets Eliot when she attends the funeral of her piano teacher. That night Anna argues with her boyfriend Paul at a restaurant. She drives off in a state of distress and has a traffic accident. She awakens on an embalming table in the funeral home to find the funeral director, Eliot, cutting off her clothes and telling her she has died. He tells Anna that he has a gift and that he can hear the dead. Eliot has a collection of photographs of corpses whom he has helped "make the transition". Eliot injects Anna with a fictional drug called hydronium bromide to "relax the muscles and keep rigor mortis from setting in."
Paul asks to see Anna's body but Eliot does not allow it on the grounds he is not family. Anna unsuccessfully attempts to escape several times. Eliot tells her she must let go of life as she had not really been living anyway. Eventually, Anna escapes and finds a room with a phone where she reaches Paul, who hangs up thinking it's a prank. Anna comes to believe she has actually died when Eliot lets her see her corpse-like self in a mirror. One of Anna's students sees her and alerts Paul, who begins to suspect she is still alive.
Anna's student Jack visits the funeral home and Eliot tells him that they share a gift, the same as Jesus, who raised Lazarus, and he offers to teach the boy more. The boy accepts and is later seen burying a living chick in a box.
During the final preparation for Anna's funeral, she asks to see herself one last time. Eliot holds up a small mirror, and while she stares at herself she notices her breath condensing on the glass and accuses Eliot of having lied to her about her being dead. Eliot injects her one last time and she slips into unconsciousness. At the funeral, Paul places the engagement ring he intended to give her the night of the crash on her finger.
After the funeral, Paul drinks heavily and behaves aggressively with Eliot, who seems to taunt him and encourage him to see for himself that Anna is really dead, telling him there is not much time. Meanwhile, Anna is shown awakening to the sound of earth being shoveled onto her casket. She cries out and desperately scratches the satin lining of the lid.
Driving under the influence of alcohol, Paul rushes to the cemetery. He and Anna embrace and she tells him that she has always loved him. Paul asks about the odd sound he hears, and Anna explains it is the sound of Eliot's gloves and scissors on the table as he prepares Paul's body. A moment later, he finds himself in the funeral home with Eliot standing over him preparing his body as he did Anna's. Eliot tells him that he never made it to the cemetery due to a car accident, which killed him. Paul protests that he is alive until the moment Eliot inserts an embalming trocar deep into his torso.
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