Dragonfly [DVD]

"Belief gets us there", explains nun Linda Hunt to grieving widower Kevin Costner in Dragonfly. Costner plays an emergency room doctor whose ordered world is startled by "messages" from his dead wife. She's talking about the journey from life to death, but it describes the doctor's road from fact to faith equally well as he puzzles out the otherworldly events of his life. Costner's mourning comes off less lost and sad than simply emotionless and inert, but he finds good support from Kathy Bates as his sassy neighbour. Her appearances, along with a few startling horror-movie-type shocks, energise a film otherwise shrouded in loss, grief, and the hushed mood of supernatural spookiness.

It's like a fusing of Ghost, The Sixth Sense, and The Mothman Prophecies, a New Age melodrama in a sentimental key that works through a rather contrived mystic mystery to a glowing climax. This is less a ghost story than a modern twist on the old-fashioned miracle. --Sean Axmaker

Spotlight on Location

Deleted Scenes

Betty Eadie Segment

Audio Commentary with Director Tom Shadyac

As head of emergency services for Chicago Memorial Hospital, Dr Joe Darrow (Kevin Costner) is a respected expert in trauma. But his professional knowledge provides little comfort when tragedy claims the life of his wife. A doctor herself, Emily Darrow (Susanna Thompson) dies in a bus accident while on a medical mission in Venezuela.

Emily's presence is everywhere: images of dragonflies, clothes and pictures. And then there are Emily's former patients in the paediatric oncology ward. Joe promised to look in on them when Emily left for Venezuela and now finds that they offer a surprising link to her. To the kids, Darrow is not a burned-out ER doctor, but rather "Emily's Joe". As some of these young patients survive near-death experiences, Joe begins to believe that Emily is trying to communicate with him from the other side. While his co-workers worry about his mental stability, Joe comes to realise that he must rely on faith for answeres to his questions.