Life After Beth

Version: Grimm Up North festival screening

Actors: 7/10

Plot/script: 7/10

Photography/visual style: 7/10

Music/score: 7/10

Overall: 7/10

It's astonishing how broad the range can be even within a sub-genre of films. Life After Beth is best described as a 'horror comedy', and yet it is completely different to other horror comedies I saw on the very same day.

The comedy comes from the situation, not the characters, who are played pretty straight. Beth (Aubrey Plaza) comes back from the dead, forcing her boyfriend Zach (Dane DeHaan) and parents (John C Reilly and Molly Shannon) to confront their grief and the conflicted feelings they have about her and their lives with her. Over the film, her behaviour becomes more abnormal, and other undead appear, causing increasing chaos.

The pacing and balance of the film are remarkably well managed. Plaza does a great job with her performance, slowly showing increasing signs of deterioration from ordinary teenage girl to mindless zombie, and each other character's reaction to the bizarre situation is shown to be ridiculous at one point or another. I note that director Jeff Baena's main other contribution to film is co-writing the script for David O. Russell's surreal comedy 'I Heart Huckabees', and I think he should really be seen as a writer who has taken up directing.

Lots of ideas are explored through Life After Beth, such as grief and the way our memories change as time passes. There is a little bit of action and tension, but mainly this is a melancholic, thoughtful piece which brings humour out of the behaviour of normal people in an abnormal situation. It's a writer's film, and an actor's film, and I found it rather touching as well as entertaining.

At first I thought this was interesting, then strange, then really funny, then finally heart warming.

The synopsis of this movie is what caught my interest, and the DVD cover also brandished 'the best zom-rom-com since Shaun of the Dead'. So I will say that the playing field for this movie was right there for a home-run.

But the movie turned out to be just another mediocre zombie movie, and I will say that "Warm Bodies" was much, much better than "Life After Beth". So there is a comparison for you right there.

While "Life After Beth" started out alright, then director Jeff Baena set up the scenario for more than he could handle, and t he movie just fell to a heap of disappointing pieces.

There wasn't a single moment throughout the movie that made me laugh, so for a comedy, then the movie failed to deliver. The movie was adequate entertainment, don't get me wrong, but it hardly sustains more than a single viewing.

The cast list was good though, and people were doing good jobs with their given roles and characters.

"Life After Beth" was a mediocre movie that set out to accomplish more than it could handle, and as such it scores a very mediocre five out of ten stars from me.

The movie did not reach my expectation, but still I enjoyed watching it. A story like this I never thought would do fairly, a better movie from the average section. I think not without the Aubrey Plaza, she as a Beth was excellent. Not a career defining performance, but funny enough. The story looks only faintly different from other similar films, but a few good scenes saved it. If it had a couple more good jokes and maybe a twist, surely would have been done greatly at the box office.

There's no surprise material in it, I thinks that's negative about it. Easy to read the situation and predict the story within the first 15 minutes, but the second half was drastically changed its pace as well as the atmosphere in the story. If you've not seen many zombie films, especially comedy ones, then you may find it better than average.

Definitely a decent direction for a first timer, got a good support from the cast. For a small budget, this is a wonderful production quality. It surely upset you if you expect like 'Warm Bodies' or 'Shaun of the Dead', but if you know all about it before giving a try, the disappointment will be lessened and you may have a decent time pass with it.

6/10

Ah, the zombie genre...Is there still anything we haven't seen before? Life after Beth takes a swing at the RomZomCom sub-genre but it biggest problem is that it isn't really anything. I suppose it's meant to be funny but there's nothing really funny about it. It isn't dramatic either or dark or creepy or anything. The trailer didn't seem to bad (and looked rather funny, reminded me a bit of Fido) but the writers don't seem to know what to do with the idea (a girl dies and returns as a zombie but doesn't know it and everyone's trying to keep it a secret). It won't be a big success because it doesn't appeal to anyone in particular and won't be remembered as a classic or even a great addition to the zombie genre.