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August 22, 2014
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Life After Beth Stumbles Along Not Living to its Potential.
— Posted by Kenny Miles
![]() Genre: Comedy | Horror | Romance
Like the Buffy the Vampire 1990’s TV show, horror is used as allegory to describe the relationship turmoil through the context of a sudden, monstrous transformation. The idea of a woman lashing out with spastic violent urges would be better explored from a female perspective. Life After Beth relies too heavily on the male perspective. It would have been more fascinating to showcase Beth’s point of view. Another TV show Life After Beth reminded me of was MAD TV…where repetitive, comedic moments no longer are funny and just drag on.
You can say my main issue I have with Life After Beth is a great premise not living up to its full potential of creative storytelling. I did laugh a few times but wanted those chuckles to be longer and happen more often. The cast does the best they can including a funny John C. Reilly as Beth’s father. As you can imagine with any zombie movie, the third act is gory and over-the-top. There is a witty site gag toward the end that a poster gives away. It is better in the context of the film than advertised to draw in an audience. ![]() As you can imagine with any zombie movie, the third act is gory and over-the-top.
Writer / Director Jeff Baena will make a significant contribution to pop culture one day. I just know it. Unfortunately, Life After Beth isn’t it. His other movie I Heart Huckabees didn’t work for me even though I happened to see it the week I was introduced to existentialism in a literature course in college. In the meantime Baena, I’m rooting for you to find that success. You have it in you.
I rate Life After Beth a 5.5 out of 10. This post was written by :
![]() Kenny Miles who has written 224 posts on The Movie Blog Whether something is overlooked by Hollywood or whatever business trend has captured the Entertainment Industry’s attention, Kenny Miles loves to talk about movies (especially the cultural impact of a film). He covers various aspects of movies including specialty genre films, limited release, independent, foreign language, documentary features, and THE much infamous "awards season." Also, he likes to offer his opinion on the business of film, marketing strategy, and branding. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado and is a member of the Denver Film Critics Society critics group. When he isn’t writing, Kenny channels his passion for interacting with moviegoers (something most movie pundits lack) as a pollster for the market research company CinemaScore and working as floor staff/special events coordinator in the film community. You can follow him on Twitter @kmiles723. visit author's website | Contact the Author Around the Web
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