Life After Beth

Watching Jeff Baena's Life After Beth, my mind kept turning to the HBO series The Leftovers.

Based on a novel by Tom Perotta, The Leftovers is about the aftermath of a Rapture-like event in which 2 percent of the world's population mysteriously disappears. It is mostly about the ways that human beings respond to seemingly inexplicable events -- it's a serious and sober reflection on how we might react to an impossible, but undeniable, fact.

Life After Beth is not so sober and serious, but it does tease at the same dynamic -- the ways we might respond to the resurrection of the dead. What would you do if your long-dead Uncle Pete showed up at your door one evening? What if your daughter, tragically dead before her time, wandered back from the graveyard and crawled into her bed? Would you rejoice or tremble? Would you take her for a miracle or a monster?

The movie begins with Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan) shopping for black napkins for a memorial for his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza, who elevates the movie with her deadpan cuteness), who died after suffering what everyone believes was a snake bite while hiking in the Hollywood hills. He has no luck in the grocery store -- turns out black napkins are more a specialty item, something for Halloween.

The grieving Zach looks for solace from Beth's parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon), but he's taken aback when they suddenly begin avoiding him. Soon he discovers why. They're sheltering Beth in their house. Zach logically assumes her death was an elaborate ruse to save her the trouble of breaking up with him. He bursts in, demanding an explanation.

But how to explain? Beth is no help. She seems chronologically challenged, trapped in the perpetual present of the day she died. She believes she has a big test she needs to cram for, but she has no interest in breaking up with Zach. When pressed, her Jewish parents insist she was "resurrected ... like Jesus."

Here the movie arrives in a very interesting place. But it too quickly moves off it, abandoning the possibility that Beth might be a singular case of extraordinary grace for the more mundane revelation that she is just another zombie. Had it lingered in this ambiguity a while longer, it might have succeeded in being genuinely good rather than just a surprisingly good movie for late August. But it's not enough to have Zach horrified by his girlfriend's sudden embrace of Kenny G. She must also develop a taste for human flesh.

And so the second half of the movie jerks back and forth between an almost sweet romantic comedy -- it edges close to the territory covered by Warm Bodies -- and a snarky pastiche of zombie pictures. And it ends on an unsatisfying note that suggests Baena had run into a dead end. What are you to do with the girlfriend from hell? Well, the saying goes, you can't live with 'em and you can't shoot 'em, but maybe in a post-zombie apocalypse, some rules get bent.

But, leaving aside the disappointing inevitability of the script, a gore-stained Plaza supplies us with some wonderful physical comedy, and an underused Anna Kendrick sparkles adorably. The cast is better than it needs to be, and Baena refreshingly doesn't waste time with exposition. There are lots of things right about Life After Beth. But it's neither very funny nor very scary, and it squanders its chance to be genuinely provocative on a philosophical or moral level.

On the other hand, it's late August. The air conditioning will feel good.

MovieStyle on 08/29/2014