Life after beth, the ending written on meth
First off, props to the writers for the sweet pun. I love zombie movies, all kinds of them. But to be honest, I mostly chose this one based on the title.
What's the dillio? Oh, you know, the usual. The dead are walking the earth. But what’s pretty neat in this one, is the scenario. I mean until the weird ending, but we’ll get to this.
I see this film as a mille-feuille movie.
First layer, sadness. Like every good movie, and even though you know the plot of this one from the beginning, it starts with just a few random scenes and not many explanations. Which sort of confuses the audience. In a nutshell, a girl goes on a hike alone and dies from a snake bite, or so they say. Everybody at the wake is pretty sad, including her boyfriend. We’ll call the boyfriend Zack because:
that’s his name in the movie
he looks like Zack from Saved by the Bell
One day, the dead girlfriend comes back home and of course Zack is thrilled. We then transition to the second layer: weirdness and disturbing scenes. Things could go back to normal but it’s actually all downhill from the day she dug herself up. She seems to have blacked out and reset to a day prior to her death. She wants to spend most of her time in the attic and have kinky sex with Zack.
But she is also developing weird kinetic abilities when she gets angry. And trust me, the girl gets angry real quick. A lot of pretty dramatic and weird/disturbing/upsetting scenes ensue, giving the movie a pretty interesting twist. We almost feel bad for Zack, trapped in this situation where his father-in-law does not want to tell his daughter she’s a zombie.
Next layer: comedy. And just like that, we’re in a Shaun of the Dead movie. There’s a zombie outbreak but it’s actually pretty funny. Like when this naked girl with autopsy marks asks Zack if the apartment building he’s at wasn’t supposed to be a car wash.
Or when the not-so-dead girlfriend tells Zack “My mom and dad would have told me if I was dead” and our hero to answer “They didn’t want to hurt your feelings”.
Everything flows pretty smoothly and it’s really funny to watch. I mean, a world where zombie are at ease when listening to smooth jazz music, come on, that’s cool! That gives hilarious scenes like when Zack’s ex-late girlfriend is hiking with a stick through the heart, tying her up to a stove, listening to a boombox hanging around her neck and screaming “This is pretty, this is pretty. Oh lavender!”
Unfortunately, that drives us to the last layer: disappointment. The end of the movie is either way to clever and advanced for me to get it, or a botched job by someone on both crack and Red Bull.
In just a few seconds, we learn that everything is back to normal, no more zombies. We do not really know why it happened and how it stopped, but hey, who cares, right? And I still do not understand why all the zombies want to spend their time in the attic. Makes me want to end this review the same way. Right here.
⇒ In a nutshell: Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick in a comedy-like zombie movie. Deadpan not so dead anymore.
⇒ My favorite scene: 2 dates of death on mulitple headstones at the cemetery
⇒ PBM rating: 3 slices out of 5
⇒ How much beer to handle it: 1.5 pints out of 5
