Jeff Baena
Occupation
Filmmaker
Life After Beth Review
By Rich Cline
Excellent
While zombie rom-coms aren't original (see Shaun of the Dead or Warm Bodies), this take on the genre has such a deadpan tone that it feels refreshingly unpredictable. While the plot sometimes seems like it's going to spin completely out of control, writer-director Jeff Baena (who wrote I Heart Huckabees) holds it together with clever twists and turns and smart, witty dialogue. And the terrific cast helps balance the humour and horror with a hint of emotional depth.
It opens as soulful teenager Zach (Dane DeHaan) is grieving about his recently deceased girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza), who was killed by a snake bite. As Zach and Beth's parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon) help each other get over the shock, they are startled when she arrives back home as if nothing happened. Utterly unaware that she's undead, Beth can't understand why Zach is looking at her strangely, while her parents become super protective, refusing to let her outside for fear that someone will spot a dead girl walking around. Then Zach begins to notice that Beth isn't the only person in town who has come back to life. And when he runs into old friend Erica (Anna Kendrick), Beth's jealousy seems to trigger a full-on zombie invasion.
By focussing on the warped relationships between the characters, the film keeps the audience both involved and entertained. The humour is a mix of bone-dry dialogue and riotously nutty visual gags that escalate as the story progresses. And there are constant wrinkles in the plot, such as how Beth conveniently can't remember breaking up with Zach before she died. Or how Zach's gung-ho brother (a scene stealing Matthew Gray Gubler) reacts to the growing threat of the walking-dead. And by combining real heart with silly comedy and even some genuine scariness, filmmaker Baena manages to make some sharp observations about both love and grief.
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'Life After Beth' Adds New Twist To Old Genre
By Rich Cline in Movies / TV / Theatre on 03 October 2014
With zombie movies steadily taking over the cinema, ‘Life After Beth’ strives to stand out from the undead crowd.
Zombie movies are as old as cinema itself, kicking off with 1930s hits like 'White Zombies' and 'The Devil's Daughter'. The genre came to mainstream prominence with George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' in 1968, after which the undead onslaught has been fairly unceasing. But a subset is just as venerable: the zombie comedy, or zom-com, can trace its roots back to 1941's 'King of the Zombies' and 1945's 'Zombies on Broadway'. More recent examples include Peter Jackson's 'Braindead' (1992) and 'Zombieland' (2009).
Dane DeHaan and Aubrey Plaza star in 'Life After Beth'
The most memorable recent zom-com is obviously Edgar Wright's 'Shaun of the Dead' (2004), which introduced a further sub-genre: the zom-rom-com. This paved the way for the likes of the Spanish romp 'Juan of the Dead' (2010), 'Warm Bodies' (2013) and 'All Cheerleaders Die' (also 2013).
Continue reading: 'Life After Beth' Adds New Twist To Old Genre
Life After Beth Trailer
Zach is a total mess following the sudden death of his girlfriend Beth and turns to her equally grief-stricken parents for support. However, when they stop contacting him, he becomes confused by their evasiveness and begins to suspect their daughter is still alive. Sure enough, there's a hole in the ground by her presumably previously occupied grave and she appears to have resurrected from the dead. Zach doesn't know what to think, but when he sees her looking just the same as she did before she died, he is overcome with emotion and decides to tell her everything that he wished he'd said before she passed. However, their happy ending is quickly cut short when Beth starts displaying increasingly erratic behaviour - such as biting and eating a man. Realising that she's a zombie complicates things for Zach, who'll give anything to keep her around but struggles to cope with her newfound brutality.
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