At a time when fast-consumption cinema replaces introspection with sentimental acceleration, “The Life List” hides its structural fragility under the guise of emotional lightness. The narrative builds upon a rich premise — a mother, facing her impending departure, leaves her daughter a series of tasks to complete if she wishes to receive her inheritance. But rather than confronting the ethical, emotional, and existential implications of a posthumous mission of this magnitude, the film settles for reducing grief to a moral scavenger hunt. What could have been a meditation on memory, bonds, and guilt is translated into a formulaic self-improvement journey, more concerned with gratifying its audience through small epiphanies than crafting a genuinely transformative experience.
The decision to avoid tension in the proposed conflicts doesn’t stem from technical limitations but from a deliberate narrative project that confuses empathy with indulgence. The protagonist, Alex, is portrayed as someone suspended — estranged from her calling, immersed in a romantically neutral relationship, professionally stagnant — yet never truly confronted by these absences. Her inertia is shown as a transitional state, but the film refuses to explore it with the required depth. The challenges set by her mother, though symbolic, become tasks completed with the predictability of a formulaic romantic comedy. Instead of allowing the character to clash with her contradictions, the script builds a universe that conspires in her favor, where difficulties are minimized and rewards appear as prizes for uncritical obedience to a pre-established plan.
There is an unintentional irony in how the film dramatizes the idea of freedom through a list. The paradox of a character who must follow instructions to discover who she is never becomes a theme, as if self-knowledge could be pre-packaged in twelve steps. The relationship with the mother, mediated through DVD recordings, also never escapes the instrumental logic of the mission: the maternal voice does not emerge as a provocative ghost but as a tutelary figure who guides, demands, and rewards. Thus, the bond between them, which could be uncomfortably loving and conflicted, is reduced to a functional interaction. What’s at stake is not the reconstruction of a relationship cut short by death, but the execution of a redemption script with no room for surprises. It’s a narrative that repels doubt, even as it flirts with themes whose power lies precisely in what cannot be resolved.
The superficiality of Alex’s transformation is evident not only in her actions but in how other characters are mobilized around her. Few have narrative depth or autonomy: the complacent boyfriend, the self-sabotaging best friend, the forgettable siblings, the lawyer wavering between watchdog and romantic interest — all orbit a protagonist who rarely hears anything she doesn’t want to. At times, the staging borders on the implausible, especially when the film insists on demonstrating emotional growth through didactic scenes that double-underline what had already been spoken. Aesthetically, the film hints at a more refined visual sensibility, but it stumbles over a direction that fears silence and ambiguity, preferring to explain with words what the image had already powerfully suggested.
What’s most unsettling, however, is not what the film says — but what it chooses to silence. Centering the narrative on the exclusive mother-daughter bond erases broader family dynamics, turning possible resentments and exclusions experienced by other family members into non-events. Even the conditional inheritance logic, which could be explored as an ethically dubious gesture, is treated as a neutral dramatic device. Instead of grappling with the implications of this choice — emotional favoritism, posthumous manipulation, the burdening of a daughter with something she may not wish to carry — the film conceals these issues beneath a thick layer of narrative benevolence. It’s as if good intentions alone could justify every omission, as if emotional kindness sanctioned any imposition.
“The Life List” ultimately fails to deliver what it promises: a journey of re-enchantment with one’s own existence. By avoiding discomfort, sweetening crises, turning dilemmas into tasks and wounds into hashtags, the narrative becomes hollow precisely where it should find depth. This is not a failure of execution, but of conception: the film does not stumble over its ambitions — it curtails them from the outset. There is a systematic refusal of the unpredictable, the ambivalent, the irreducible — the very things that define the human experience when confronted with loss, desire, and time. When the screen fades to black, what remains is not the reverent silence of a story that moved us, but the quiet rustle of what almost got said but was lost for fear of disturbing.
Film: The Life List
Director: Adam Brooks
Year: 2025
Genres: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Rating: 8/10