Miles Grissom (Clark Freeman) is terrified of dying and issues a challenge that he will pay $30,000 to anyone who can offer definitive proof of the afterlife. Mike’s mother (Annette O’ Toole), concerned about her son’s mental well-being, helps pore through the large volume of letters, e-mails and videos Mike receives from people claiming they can prove that life goes on after death. They eventually narrow it down to three candidates: a scientist named Dr. Ellison (John Glover) who invites Mike and his mother to witness a night time experiment at an abandoned school; a harried housewife who claims to be a medium and can see and speak to ghosts; and a rich businessman who professes to have the answers he desires. As Mike and his mother evaluate these possible leads, the deeper they go, the closer to finding answers they get. But is Mike ready to see and hear what he thinks he wants?

From the directors of the similarly underrated, slow burn horror film Yellowbrickroad, Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland, We Go On is a consistently engrossing tale of grief and fear of death. While death is no stranger to most horror movies, relatively few actually deal with the conceptual fear of death itself. We Go On tackles it head on though with our protagonist Miles being physically paralyzed with fear at times, a deeply troubled man who wants answers to alleviate his suffocating sense of anxiety. Structurally the film is quite unique. Rather than following a standard three-act screenplay like most films, We Go On is divided into thematically distinct halves. The first half of the film is an almost episodic ghost investigation type structure as Mike visits the selected candidates from the solicitations he received. But at about the midway point, a particular event occurs and the film shifts gears dramatically into a very different kind of film which I will try to avoid discussing in depth to avoid spoilers. Both halves are quite interesting, although personally I did enjoy the investigative section a little more for its variety and light touches of humor. I feel like We Go On when it was first released may have been a victim of misaligned expectations. Premiering on Shudder, many may have wanted more visceral thrills of like other Shudder exclusives being released at the time like Revenge and Terrified. We Go On does have a handful of jump scares, but honestly, it doesn’t need them and I feel like those are some of the weakest elements of the film. Looking back on it though, I feel like in this more accepting environment of different styles of horror that companies like A24 and Neon have paved the way for mainstream acceptance of, We Go On is primed for rediscovery as a hidden gem on contemplating the nature of death and the beauty of living.

Lightyear brings us a newly remastered transfer as well as touching up the visual effects. I’m generally not a fan of this kind of revisionism but the effects improvements are generally pretty mild and handled tastefully. I didn’t go back and view the original version again, but I do recall on my original watch of this 7 years ago or so that it did have some fairly chintzy effects work in it, and I didn’t have that thought on this watch. So mission accomplished! The image itself is very clear and represents the natural color palette very well. The audio is provided in both 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. The 5.1 mix in particular has some very nice immersion in some of the spookier scenes like the abandoned school sequence and the scene by the airport. For extras we have three audio commentaries. The first is with director Andy Mitton and is I think the best of the three. Mitton speaks at length on the making of the film, their approach to it, how the idea began, the casting process and all other sorts of useful nuggets of info with very few pauses. The second commentary with director Jesse Holland also has some good information sprinkled about but there are more sections where he stops talking and just watches the film. The third commentary is with stars Annette O’Toole and Clark Freeman. This one is much more laid back with a few interesting pieces of information but mostly just comments on the film and what’s happening. It’s easy to see why the actors had such good rapport on screen. They seemed to get along really well. As a full-length listen though, the commentary does drag at times.

We Go On is a great hidden gem of a slow burn horror film, and hopefully thanks to this nice new remastered release, the film will finally get the wider audience it deserves.