Life After Beth Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Life After Beth Blu-ray Movie Review

Lukewarm bodies.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 21, 2014

How many times have you watched a skit on Saturday Night Live and thought, “Okay, enough already. Great premise, initially good execution, now just let it go.” That same general reaction may await you when watching Life After Beth, the latest in what is evidently an emerging subgenre in the already overcrowded niche afforded to zombies, namely the so-called zom-com (or maybe we should call it zom- rom-com), as typified by last year’s Warm Bodies. Life After Beth reverses the order of that “inter-species” relationship by having a zombie female and human male trying to figure out “young love” as the girl’s flesh begins to rot and her mind turns ever more strongly toward feeding on someone else’s flesh. Occasionally hilarious but frequently fairly labored and self-conscious, Life After Beth is the first directing effort of I Heart Huckabees co-writer Jeff Baena. Baena has a keenly observational style which helps to elevate some of the material here, but Life After Beth never seems to know whether it wants to be a raucous laugh-a-thon or something a bit more thoughtful (or at least as thoughtful as a zombie flick is able to be).

A brief prelude shows Beth Slocum (Aubrey Plaza) hiking by herself in one of the canyons outside of Los Angeles. (Baena reveals in the commentary that he added this scene in order to qualify for a Los Angeles tax credit, since he needed to have something in the can within 100 days of the credit being granted.) That then cuts to a shocking realization that Beth is in fact dead, having suffered a mortal snakebit while on that hike. Her boyfriend Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan) is obviously in shock, a situation that is not helped by his weirdly sanguine parents Judy (Cheryl Hines) and Noah (Paul Reiser). When the Orfmans sit shiva with Beth’s parents Maury (John C. Reilly) and Geenie (Molly Shannon), it becomes apparent that Zach may in fact feel more at home with his deceased girlfriend’s family than he does with his own.

That level of comfort leads to one of the more charming and heartfelt scenes in the early part of the film, where Zach and Maury share a joint over a game of chess as they both reveal their regrets about their last interactions with Beth. Maury seems better adjusted to the situation, telling Zach he can’t define his entire relationship with Beth by whatever happened last. Zach is still relatively inconsolable, and takes to wearing a “security muffler” of sorts that used to belong to Beth.

When Maury and Geenie weirdly clam up and refuse to answer Zach’s calls or visits to their home, Zach becomes almost frantic. In a nicely done scene, he drops by the Slocum house uninvited one day and doesn’t give up at the front door, eventually peeking in through some rear windows where he’s shocked to see Beth in the home. Understandably freaking out, he goes berserk on the Slocums’ doorstep, only to be reigned in by his dunderheaded but officious brother Kyle (Matthew Gray Gubler), who works as a guard for the local homeowners’ association.

Of course it turns out that Beth has returned from the grave, albeit without any memory of having died or indeed of having gotten herself out of her casket. (I always wonder about embalming during these zombie flicks—evidently zombies don’t need their own blood to survive.) Initially Zach thinks he’s been pranked, but ultimately he comes to understand that this is a rare second chance he’s been offered where he can make good on some unfulfilled promises he had made to Beth before her (first?) demise. Zach basically wants to pick things up where they left off, but Maury is somewhat protective, fearing that if anyone finds out about Beth, it will cause panic.

Life After Beth perhaps appropriately shambles along affably enough as Zach attempts to rekindle his relationship with Beth, even as her behavior becomes increasingly problematic. It’s here that the film finds some geniune hilarity, especially after Zach’s well meaning mom introduces him to a new girl named Erica Wexler (Anna Kendrick) in the hopes it will take his mind off Beth, whom most folks still believe is dead. There is a laugh out loud scene involving the now rather erratic Beth, whom Zach inadvertently runs over with his car, and Erica, who is understandably confused that the girl in front of her is someone who supposedly shuffled off this mortal coil. The farcical ambience of this scene perfectly encapsulates the balancing act that Baena attempts throughout the film.

Unfortunately, that balancing act is too hard to sustain, and the film falters at times, including in a lunatic scene where a mini-horde of zombies shows up at the Orfman abode, causing untold confusion. What should have been a hilarious highlight of the film, with both a grandfather and the Orfman’s house’s original owners shuffling in through the front door while Kyle freaks out with a gun, simply devolves into pure chaos, with few punchlines actually landing with any force.

Baena manages to get things back on track in the film’s final moments, which sees some gruesome content mitigated by extremely juvenile but still guffaw inducing physical comedy, with Beth tied to an oversized stove to keep her from attacking anyone. Like a zombie, Life After Beth is somewhat mindless, coasting on increasingly feeble momentum, but it will probably provide sufficient nourishment for zom- rom-com fans who aren’t in the mood for human flesh.

My colleague Brian Orndorf had a somewhat more overall positive take on Life After Beth which you can read here.

Life After Beth Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Life After Beth is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Shot digitally with the Arri Alexa, Life After Beth has a smooth and sleek appearance that can look just slightly flat and shallow some of the time, especially given the kind of dusty looking yellow-brown color grading that's appended to several sequences. In fact one of the few moments that pops in any traditional way is the brief prelude showing Beth hiking, where greens leap off the screen. This was no doubt an intentional gambit, with the slightly desanguinated palette during the rest of the film a suitable visual analog to Beth's undead status. Detail is strong throughout the presentation, with fine detail providing some occasionally squirm inducing elements like Beth's cheek starting to decay after a day in the sun. There are no issues with image instability or artifacts.

Life After Beth Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Life After Beth features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which really springs to life through the use of ubiquitous source cues, as well as some great sound effects, including several forceful instances of gunfire. Dialogue is cleanly presented and is spatially splayed in some crowded, noisy scenes like the zombie incursion of the Orfman home. Fidelity is excellent and there are no problems to cause concern.

Life After Beth Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Jeff Baena and Actors Aubrey Plaza, Dane Dehaan and Matthew Gubler. Surprisingly sparse, with quite a bit of dead space in between occasional bursts of activity, this is more anecdotal than informational in nature.


• Life After Beth: The Post Mortem (1080p; 15:48) has a cute title but is a fairly rote EPK with interviews and scenes from the film.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 19:45)

Life After Beth Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Life After Beth has moments of inspired lunacy, and those help carry the film over what are occasional stumbles and inconsistent tone. The performances by Plaza, who plays Beth as a kind of petulant Valley Girl zombie, and DeHaan, whose manic proclivities generate much of the film's humorous whimsy, are a definite strong point. But Life After Beth, rather like a zombie, takes an unexpectedly long time to get to its point. Some judicious shaving of the first act might have helped the overall comedic sensibility. This doesn't have the appealing emotional content that Warm Bodies did, but it still manages to deliver some hearty laughs. Technical merits are strong and Life After Beth comes Recommended.