Life After Beth (2014)

A young man's recently deceased girlfriend mysteriously returns from the dead, but he slowly realizes she is not the way he remembered her.

Director:

Jeff Baena

Writer:

Jeff Baena

Stars:

Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly

6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Aubrey Plaza	...	Beth Slocum
Dane DeHaan	...	Zach Orfman
John C. Reilly	...	Maury Slocum
Molly Shannon	...	Geenie Slocum
Cheryl Hines	...	Judy Orfman
Paul Reiser	...	Noah Orfman
Matthew Gray Gubler	...	Kyle Orfman
Anna Kendrick	...	Erica Wexler
Eva La Dare	...	Pearline
Thomas McDonell	...	Dan (scenes deleted)
Alia Shawkat	...	Roz (scenes deleted)
Allan McLeod	...	Supermarket Stocker
Paul Weitz	...	Mr. Levin
Michelle Azar	...	Mrs. Levin
Jim O'Heir	...	Chip the Mailman

Storyline

A hike alone in the woods ends tragically for Beth Slocum with a fatal snake bite. Her death leaves her parents and boyfriend Zach reeling. After the funeral, Zach tries to make friends with Mr. and Mrs. Slocum, but even they reject him, and he's determined to figure out why. Then he sees Beth. Her parents are trying to keep her resurrection a secret, but zombie Beth provides Zach with the opportunity to do everything with her that he didn't get to do while she was still alive. But with Beth's increasingly erratic behavior and even more strange occurrences around town, life with the undead Beth proves to be particularly complicated for her still-living loved ones.

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Plot Keywords:

reunion | death of girlfriend | loss of girlfriend | male male hug | name in title | 

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Taglines:

Some girls just want to watch the world burn.

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Genres:

Comedy | Fantasy | Horror | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for pervasive language, some horror violence, sexual content, nudity and brief drug use

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

15 July 2014 (USA)

Also Known As:

Amor zombie (Life after Beth)

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$2,400,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$15,843, 15 August 2014, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$80,315, 5 September 2014

Company Credits

Production Co:

Abbolita Productions,American Zoetrope,Destro Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

89 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The photograph of Beth (Aubrey Plaza) that Zach (Dane DeHaan) grabs near the end of the film was clearly taken from the final scene of the Parks and Recreation season 4 episode 6 "End of the World", which Aubrey Plaza also stars in.

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Goofs

(at around 5 mins) When Zach and Maury are playing a game of chess, the black square is in the bottom right corner when it should be the white square.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Supermarket Stocker: Can I help you find something, sir?
Zach Orfman: Yeah, do you have any black napkins. I've been looking all over.
Supermarket Stocker: Black napkins... I don't think so. If you don't like white, this is a beige one
Zach Orfman: They have to be black.
Supermarket Stocker: That's more of a Halloween item. You might want to try a party store.
Zach Orfman: [gives a slow, incredulous look]

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Connections

Referenced in Chelsea Lately: Episode #8.114 (2014)

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Soundtracks

Feels So Good
Written and performed by Chuck Mangione
Published by Gates Music Inc.
Courtesy of A&M Records
Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User Reviews

Neither funny nor scary "comedy/horror" so what was the point?

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.