I had some reservations about watching this movie because, well, a friend from work said that there were reviews up saying that it wasn’t very good. But, after much consideration and remembering how much I liked Dane DeHaan in Chronicle, it was pretty much a no brainer. Also, having just stepped out of If I Stay, I felt like I deserved and needed a good dose of something silly.
Here’s the round-up of Jeff Baena (writer of I Heart Huckabees)’s Sundance Film Fest zombie rom-com, Life After Beth.
Please note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk.
THE STORY:
Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan – The Amazing Spider-Man 2) is very much distraught when his long-time girlfriend Beth Slocum (Aubrey Plaza – Scoty Pilgrim vs vs. the World) dies suddenly of a snake bite while hiking a nearby mountain. His world slowly collapses on him and he is filled with regret at the things that he did’t find the time for while Beth was still living. His family – mom Judy (Cheryl Hines – Suburgatory), dad Noah (Paul Reiser – Mad About You) and big brother Kyle (Matthew Gary Gubler – 500 Days of Summer) – are compassionate but do not understand what he is going through, urging him to move on.
Feeling the desperate need to be closer to Beth, Zach starts spending his time at the Slocum household, making quick friends with Beth’s dad Maury (John C. Reilly – Guardians of the Galaxy) and her mom Geenie (Molly Shannon – Superstar). When Beth suddenly re-appears seeming to have no recollection of her death whatsoever, Zach and the Slocums quickly jump at the chance to make ammends for their perceived sins. The only thing is, the Beth who came back isn’t quite the same as the Beth they knew, and that spells out big trouble when Zach’s childhood friend Erica Wexler (Anna Kendrick – Pitch Perfect) enters the picture.
THE GOOD:
- Dane DeHaan. This being his first comedy, I think he did a pretty good job at it. He was in extremely good company, of course, but he held his own quite well. There was a sense of realism in his person that made it feel like all other characters are carricatures playing a prank on his only real, sensible person in the movie. Also, he looks really good in black although at this point he may want to back out of skinny, brooding emo roles for fear of being typecasted (or is that too late already?).
- The supporting cast. Whoa, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen something this heavily laden with stellar comics. John C. Reilly played Maury with enough love that you don’t begrudge him for being overprotective and Molly Shannon made the crazed overly supportive mother work. There was one scene where she was literally cutting her fingers off just so that Beth could have something to eat. Ridiculous? Very. But strangely, it works in the context of the movie.
- They actually made an effort to delve into the complexities of grief. It felt like a whole other movie during the first few minutes, before Beth came back, because everybody was more realistic and emotional in those scenes. Even though we haven’t really met Beth yet, we do feel her loss.
- That they fully embraced the ridiculous. I loved that everybody was fully committed to the incredibly ridiculous premise. Things went very weird, very fast, when Beth came back but because everyone was so into it, you sort of just go along with it as an audience.
- Beth’s dress. It really was very cute.
THE BAD:
- The whole Perline sub-plot. That was a waste of time. If it doesn’t contribute anything to the story, the film makers should’ve shaved it off.
- Anna Kendrick just has too strong a face to play a giggly airhead. Mis-cast. This isn’t her brand of comedy, unfortunately.
- The lack of explanation as to how the zombies came back in the first place. Okay, I guess in the end it doesn’t matter how but it would’ve been nice to know how the bodies that should’ve decomposed ages ago all managed to come back whole.
- The kids had no jobs. Sorry, but it really bothered me that these people could afford to sit and mope for days on end without doing anything. Were they college students on some kind of break? They certainly weren’t in high school.
THE UGLY:
- Some parts were messy, especially towards the end of the movie. Not literally, of course – although there was a lot of blood – but story-wise, the film sort of racked up a lot of unanswered questions.
- It tried to make sense of the ridiculous. Unfortunately because the film tried to incorporate a semblance of “sense” into the extremely ridiculous story, there were a lot of questions raised that the film just couldn’t answer. Did Beth start eating people purely out of spite at Zach calling her a dead zombie? Or was that a natural progression of her situation? How come there weren’t any other people eating zombies around?
All in all Life After Beth was an entertaining movie and I can’t begrudge it the fact that not once did I look at my watch during the eighty-nine minute run time. I was surprised at the emotional aspect of the movie and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film that captured the devastation of grief. The film was at its best during the emotional scenes and most of those came from the ridiculous ones. Performances from most of the actors were solid enough to make the absurd story somewhat palatable but in the end it was the film’s undoing when the film makers tried to make sense of things.
THE VERDICT: 6/10.
*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.
