Life After Beth

Beware: this movie is NOT suited for (die hard) zombie fans, although it is (wrongly) marketed as a zombie movie.The zombie fans didnt get what they expected and they started complaining about it on Imdb. But that doesnt make this movie a bad movie, not at all.

This movie is probably better suited for an arthouse audience who appreciates SERIOUS acting above gross action scenes. Life after Beth is basically a slowburning, quirky romantic comedy about Dane DeHaan, who is dating a girlfriend (Aubrey Plaza, those eyes! ) who has died, although she doesnt realize it yet. The many practical difficulties of dating a girlfriend, who has died and who immediately has come back to life, is what makes this movie quite witty and original.

It is not a full blown comedy though, because acting and story (up to a point) are mostly done seriously. But serious acting performances only enhance the comedy effect, in a tongue in cheek kinda way. Great supporting actor roles as well!

Any bad? The start of this story is great. But later on the movie is lacking a bit in suspense and drama, because it has become more of a predictable action / zombie story, although the dramatic end part of this movie is rather good again. 8 stars for originality of the story and 8 stars for the quirky kind of humour, which is quite delightful!

Starts out decent enough, initially I thought that it was a good thing that the movie started straight away with Beth being dead so you wouldn't just sit and wait for her to die so she could finally come back from the dead.

But really in retrospect, had there been any scenes of her life and her relationsship with Zach perhaps that would make the viewer understand exactly what it was that Zach fell for in Beth in the first place.

Cause the "living dead" Beth has zero personality, and she doesn't seem to care much about Zach after her death (nor anything else for that matter) so it's hard to see why Zach would still be so deeply in love with her based on her personality after death, it surely must have differed a bit.

But then again, most characters in this movie are one-tracked one- dimensional beings so maybe not, maybe she always was like that, which would just add more confusion as to why Zach (who is a fairly normal kid) would like her that much.

But then again not much about this movie makes much sense.

I guess it tries to be sort of a dark comedy but it's not dark enough, dark comedy is supposed to shock the viewer or be slightly disturbing at least, this movie just fails at that completely, and the horror aspect of the movie: forget about it.

I don't know why John C Reilly who I like tons would appear in this movie, based on his performance I don't think he did either, hope he got a good paycheck for it at least.

Molly Shannon plays the mother, at least on paper, there was nothing motherly about her character, and she wasn't funny either, just a very flat character.

I dunno what to say more about this movie, it fails at being funny and scary and it also fails at being good and it even fails at being completely terrible, it's just a big soup of mehhh.

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

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.

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.