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In spite of Aubrey Plaza's committed performance, Life After Beth remains a sketch-worthy idea that's been uncomfortably stretched to feature length. Read critic reviews
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Movie Info
A guy (Dane DeHaan) discovers that his girlfriend (Aubrey Plaza) has returned from the dead, but his joy turns to horror as she slowly undergoes a horrible transformation.
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Rating: R (Nudity|Brief Drug Use|Pervasive Language|Sexual Content|Some Horror Violence)
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Genre: Comedy, Horror
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Original Language: English
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Director: Jeff Baena
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Producer: Michael Zakin, Liz Destro
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Writer: Jeff Baena
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Release Date (Theaters): limited
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Box Office (Gross USA): $80.3K
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Runtime:
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Distributor: A24
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Production Co: StarStream Entertainment, American Zoetrope, Abbolita Productions
Cast & Crew
News & Interviews for Life After Beth
Critic Reviews for Life After Beth
Audience Reviews for Life After Beth
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This is one I had wanted to see for a while, but I didn't actually like it that much. I don't know why, but Aubrey Plaza is always annoying, even though I generally like sarcastic/deadpan type characters. The movie drags and just doesn't live up to its potential.
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We go from one extreme of the horror/romance genre with Spring to the other with Life after Beth. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad in the conventional sense. I think the cast is definitely solid enough to elevate the shallow script past to what you end up seeing on screen. Though, honestly, it's not like that's much to begin with. There's just too much working against them for this film to be good. Honestly, I like the concept. It's not that it's something that's really that unique to begin with, but I think you could've done far more with it than they did here. Essentially, the film boils down to, at first, to keeping Beth's death a secret from her, even as her skin starts to deteriorate and she starts behaving strangely. That's like a third of the film and it gets really repetitive after a while. They get some chuckles out of the situation, but not nearly enough. Then Beth finds out she's a zombie as her behavior becomes increasingly more erratic and aggressive. Aubrey Plaza is great in this movie, and she makes this transformation work, but the scripting, again, is one-note. Then, inexplicably, the third act of the film is the zombie apocalypse. It makes no sense whatsoever. They definitely do tease that something is wrong, since Zach keeps seeing people that he hasn't seen in ages, but they don't even ease into it gradually. It's just like 'the zombie apocalypse is now and that's the way it is'. It's a jarring tonal shift that's just really poorly fucking written. Again, if it had been something gradual, but it's not. Zach and Beth have an argument at a cemetery, Beth steals Zach's car and she leaves. Then Zach runs home and the shit has already hit the fan. I know that writing scripts are hard, I'm not trying to minimize the hard work that it takes to write a great movie, but come the fuck on. You have to realize when something is poorly written and the zombie apocalypse and its integration into this film's story is really terribly executed. There's a good idea here with Zach getting a second chance at love, as corny as that sounds, and he finally gets to tell Beth all the things he never did while she was alive. The fact that Zach clings so strongly to a zombie of a person he once knew is, easily, the best part of the film, but they only really touch on that with any insight at the end of the film, when Zach and Beth go hiking. I thought that was the only bit of the film that really touched on how much Beth meant to Zack when she was still alive and I just wish the movie would've been better as to show that connection throughout the film, instead of just the climax. It would've helped if they had flashbacks to when Zach and Beth were together, maybe even include some stuff relating to their breakup that Zach mentioned a lot in the film. That would've given you some context and more detail into how and why Zach loved this girl so much. But they didn't. The film is poorly put together, right from the start. The first scene is Beth hiking. They flash the title card and then the next scene is the post-funeral reception. Really. So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the zombie apocalypse was so poorly handled. Oh, and don't even get me started on how the apocalypse ends. There's, literally, a newscast, after Zach gets to the Levins', where his parents are staying, after saying goodbye to Beth, that just says 'the zombie apocalypse has ended' and that's it. No reasons given as to what happened or how it happened, the theory maybe being that Beth was the 'head' of the zombies and once you cut off the head, the body falls. That's where the movie is guiding you towards, but they never even fucking touched on Beth having some sort of control over the zombies or that she's the cause of everything that's going on, so that's another shitty aspect of the film. They, pretty much, get rid of the zombies by waving a magic wand and just removing them from the film without any reasonable explanation. It's honestly really terrible. This movie is a good reason why reviewing films, to me at least, are important. I wasn't as harsh on this film upon finishing it, but reviewing it has really shown me that this film is considerably worse than what I originally thought. Oh and Anna Kendrick is here as a pointless love interesting for Dane Dehaan's character. She has a 5-minute scene halfway through the movie and is never seen until the end. I love Anna Kendrick, and this isn't her fault, but why even bother casting her in the role if her role is gonna be so minor and irrelevant to the overall plot? She's just wasted here. Say what you will about Burying the Ex, which wasn't a great movie, but at least it made better use of its concept than this film. This isn't a good movie in the slightest. Solid cast isn't everything. The film is just really poorly written and it hinders the cast more than it helps them. Thankfully I saw this on Amazon Prime Video, so I didn't have to pay. But, still, this is a bad movie.
jesse o Super Reviewer -
Aubrey Plaza and Dane DeHaan are always quality, but the ever present brand of film we've been getting these past few years of "Horror-Comedy that isn't scary and isn't funny" wore thin a long, long time ago, and Life After Beth is no exception.
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Banking off the hot zombie craze that has been floating around nowadays, "Life After Beth" follows Zack after his girlfriend dies in the forest from a snake bite. Learning that she has come back from the dead and is slowly decaying into a zombie, he must learn to somehow tell her and help her deal with it. The dark-comedy undertone made this film much more watchable than it would have been, had it been taken 100% serious. Dane Dehaan and Aubrey Plaza are solid in these roles, although for some reason it seems they overact a tad too much. In the end, "Life After Beth" has an atmosphere that is believable enough, and a cast that is quirkily endearing. I loved watching this film for what it was, however, it does get tired by the end, and that is not a good thing considering it's short run time. It begins to fall into the predictable category by the last act, even though it held up the sheer fun element. Overall, a predictable film that is fun to watch!
kj p Super Reviewer
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