It was and when I was writing, I was conscious of it. One of the great things in the film is how you’re able to allude to a larger world outside of these characters while keeping the focus squarely on them. I just know that I wanted to tell the story. It starts off somber, then it gets a little bit more upbeat and manic and frantic, and then it gets terrifying. I’ve always been a fan of the fantastic in fiction, and I like the idea of maintain the hesitation between the uncanny and the marvelous, and I wanted to maintain that hesitation for as long as possible to tell this story where it starts off mirroring our protagonist’s emotional state. Then they shut him out, and then he sees her through the window, so it was that mysterious, enigmatic moment that I’d built the script out from, both forward and backwards. The first image that I had in my head was of a boy whose girlfriend died, and who got really close to her family. I just set out to write that specific story, and I was happy with what came out of it.ĭid it start specifically as a zombie film or a relationship movie?
Life after beth movie movie#
I never really set out to write a zombie movie or a dark comedy or romantic comedy or drama. It was pouring out of me, and so I just captured it. There wasn’t really any limitations to it. I just had the story in my head and I wanted to tell it, and it just felt like it was coming out like a fever dream.
Was it something you were passionate about at the time? You’ve said it was the only script you’ve started from scratch with the idea you’d direct it. After putting it away for 10 years, I didn’t really think about it, so it’s almost like my mind unconsciously was letting it stew, but for the most part, I just moved on from it. You come at it from a little bit more of an objective place, and think like, “Geez, what was I thinking? That’s crazy.” But at the same time, it was refreshing that in my mind, it still held up, and I didn’t really have to do much work on it to get it in a good place to be able to shoot it. What was it like to come back to this script after putting it aside?
Shortly before “Life After Beth” hits theaters, Baena spoke about reviving “Life After Beth” a decade after first putting pen to paper, the proper way to escalate calamity in a scene, and the image that inspired him to make the movie. Try as Dehaan’s Zach might to make up for the mistakes of his initial courting of Beth (Plaza), he learns no amount of flamenco dancing lessons will prevent him from the same missteps he made the first time, finding himself digging his feet even deeper now that he feels shared responsibility over Beth’s continuing well-being with her parents (Shannon and Reilly). Reilly, Molly Shannon, Dane DeHaan and Anna Kendrick, only reinforced the commercial potential of “Life After Beth,” the film reveals itself to be as philosophically intuitive as one might expect from the filmmaker who first gained notice as the co-writer of “I Heart Huckabee’s.” With its chaos not constrained to the viral resurrection of the undead, Baena spins “Life After Beth”‘s horrific premise into a vivacious meditation on rekindling a romance that’s gone toxic.
Life after beth movie series#
Perhaps ahead of its time as it comfortably takes its place now amongst a series of thoughtful, inventive relationship deconstructions such as “The One I Love” and “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” rolling out this fall, “Life After Beth” had even slipped Baena’s mind until his girlfriend Aubrey Plaza lacked for interesting projects to potentially star in and her agent recalled the script her beau wrote in 2003 about a guy mourning the loss of his significant other shortly after the two had a falling out, only to realize a second chance at love after a zombie outbreak brings her back to life, albeit in rapidly deteriorating form.Īlthough the ascent of Plaza as a star, helping to recruit a cast of fellow formidable talents including John C. It is fitting that “Life After Beth” only made it to the big screen after being all but consigned to death, sitting somewhere on a shelf at writer/director Jeff Baena’s house for the past 10 years after a previous attempt to produce it proved unsuccessful.
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