Life After Beth is a 2014 American zombie comedy film written and directed by Jeff Baena. The film stars Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser, Matthew Gray Gubler, and John C. Reilly. A cameo by Garry Marshall was one of his final film appearances.
Baena wrote the script in 2003; though it was well received in Hollywood, an early production quickly fell through. Nearly a decade later, Plaza was introduced to the script independently of her relationship with Baena, and wanted to star. Her involvement – and the coincidental postponement of another film Baena was working on – meant that Life After Beth entered production quickly in 2012, with principal photography taking place in the summer of 2013.
Inspired by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, it follows Zach (DeHaan) after his girlfriend Beth (Plaza) has died and been reanimated as a zombie: Zach struggles in trying to grieve the Beth he knew while also trying to prevent the zombie Beth's deterioration. Rather than focusing on the zombie apocalypse happening, the film follows Zach navigating his relationship in suburbia.
It premiered in competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2014, and was given a limited release on August 15, 2014. The film received mixed reviews, with praise for Plaza's performance; opinions differed on Baena's writing, particularly in terms of zombie tropes and the film's ending, and management of genre and tone.
Plot Zach Orfman is devastated when his girlfriend, Beth Slocum, dies after being bitten by a venomous snake while hiking. He begins spending time with Beth's parents, Geenie and Maury; when Zach confesses that he and Beth were having problems in their relationship, Maury tries to brush it off.
When Geenie and Maury suddenly stop contacting Zach, he visits their house and sees Beth through a window. Zach yells to be let in but his brother Kyle, a security officer, escorts him off the premises. Zach breaks in to the Slocum's that night and discovers that Beth has risen from the dead and her parents have been hiding her. He begins having arguments with Geenie and Maury about Beth. They are reluctant to let her leave the house during daytime and refuse to tell her that she died. When Zach takes Beth on a daytime date in the park, her face starts to blister and Maury bans Zach from seeing Beth. Zach continues to sneak in.
Beth grows increasingly violent and begins having severe mood swings. Zach notices other people around town acting similarly and tries to sort out his thoughts by talking to childhood friend, Erica Wexler. As they leave the diner, Zach accidentally runs Beth over with his car. Unharmed, she scares helpful bystanders away by screaming at them. After a violent confrontation with Erica, when Beth mistakenly assumes Zach is cheating on her, Zach brings Beth to her grave and tells her the truth. Zach tries to break up with her, only for her to angrily drive off in his car.
Maury implores Zach to tell Beth that he lied about her being dead and promise to stay with her forever, to which Zach reluctantly agrees, noticing that Beth's emotional stability slows her zombie behavior. He tries to run away with her, wanting to avoid the growing problems with the town, which also agitate Beth, but Maury knocks him out to take Beth home. Once Zach wakes, he returns home to find burnt bodies in the backyard, which he believes to be his family.
Zach prepares to leave the state, but changes his mind and drives back to the Slocum house. He finds the house in disarray and discovers that Beth, now a full-fledged bloodthirsty zombie, has eaten Maury and some of Geenie's fingers. Zach enables Geenie to escape and calms Beth by promising to hike with her. They run into Kyle, who is hunting zombies and explains that their parents are still alive and have fled to a safehouse. Kyle gives Zach his handgun and encourages him to put Beth out of her misery. Zach and Beth stop by a cliff. He tearfully apologizes for never doing the things she wanted when she was still alive. They profess their love to each other before Zach shoots her in the head.
Zach is reunited with his family at the safehouse, along with a traumatized Erica, who was forced to kill her own grandmother. The survivors make plans to leave town, but the power suddenly returns and a TV news report claims things have returned to normal. Some time later, Zach visits Beth and Maury's graves. Zach invites Erica for dinner and she accepts, smiling as they drive off.
Cast
Production
Writing and development Jeff Baena wrote the screenplay for Life After Beth – originally titled Winged Life after a line in a William Blake poem – in two weeks in 2003 as production was wrapping on I Heart Huckabees, his first major film credit. His initial ideas were of a girlfriend suddenly dying, the boyfriend seeing her through a window one day, and the couple trying to make their relationship work. Baena was going through a break-up around the time, which he felt subconsciously influenced his story. He said that the film for him was about a bad relationship, the wish fulfillment of getting back together, and the curse of reconciliation being a disaster; he also reflected that the story is not necessarily about break-ups, but how people work through any kind of personal pain. Predominantly a working screenwriter before he directed Life After Beth, it was his only spec script and the first film he wrote with the intention of directing himself. It appeared on the inaugural Black List – an industry survey of the most promising unproduced scripts – and was cited as an example of outstanding writing in coverage guidelines.
Not specifically interested in making a zombie film, Baena was thematically influenced by Blake's poem "Eternity" and inspired by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which also gave the Orpheus-substitute character Zach his last name of Orfman. In writing Zach's emotional response to his girlfriend's return, Baena was drawn to "the Todorovian sort of hesitation between the marvelous and the uncanny" – to create uncertainty in whether the girlfriend character had been resurrected or was part of a scam or otherwise – and using the fantastical setting to explore grounded character dynamics.
In 2004, the film was in development at Fox Searchlight Pictures with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Zach. When this production fell through, Baena put the project down until the agent of comic actress Aubrey Plaza was looking for a role for Plaza to break away from being typecast as characters similar to her role as April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation. Plaza's agent remembered the script and showed Plaza, who said it was "one of the best scripts that [she had] ever read". Baena and Plaza were already in a relationship but, because Baena had moved on from the project, he had not considered Plaza for the role of Beth until she brought up the script to him and he felt she was ideal for the role.
Baena attached producer friend Michael Zakin, at which point the project gained momentum. He said Life After Beth moved into production very quickly; Baena pivoted to focus on the film when pre-production for Joshy, which he had intended to be his directorial debut, had to be postponed by collaborator Adam Pally for personal reasons. They had received a California Tax Credit for Joshy and needed to shoot something in California within 100 days, filming an extra scene for Life After Beth to achieve this and then going ahead with production. Producer Liz Destro noted that the pre-production was helped by having availability for lead actors Plaza and Dane DeHaan, which brought in financing. Baena also attributed production speed to how he found it easier to gather support after the 2000s zombie film revival, compared to the initial production attempt in 2004 when zombie comedy was not an established genre.
He said that despite some initial "feelings of disappointment and unresolved crap" when the film was picked back up, he discarded those thoughts and got on with making it. He made some technical rewrites, including removing a layer of the film that reflected on the early presidency of George W. Bush that he felt lacked relevancy, but did not want to rewrite it any further as he did not want the core of his story to be affected by the influence of major zombie films (naming Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland) that had been released after 2003.
Casting
When production began with Plaza attached, Baena reached out to John C. Reilly – to whom he had been introduced by close friend Miguel Arteta – with the script and signed him on. Attracting the cast then "snowballed", with DeHaan joining next; Baena wanted a more dramatic actor to keep the film grounded and asked DeHaan after they met at a poker night Baena hosted. The ensemble cast includes a number of popular comedic actors, many of whom Baena had personally approached with the concept and felt lucky they responded, explaining that much of the supporting cast were performers he had admired since he was young and just wanted to work with. When Baena met with Reilly about his role, Reilly suggested Molly Shannon to play opposite him; Shannon was sent the script and enjoyed how Baena wrote family, as well as the humor in his realism. Neither she nor Cheryl Hines were interested in doing zombie films; when Hines was sent the script it was not labelled as a zombie film and she was interested in the character relationships.
Baena had enjoyed filmmaker Paul Weitz's role in Chuck & Buck, directed by Arteta, and pushed hard to get Weitz to make a cameo; Weitz rescheduled a vacation to be involved and would continue appearing in Baena's future films, along with Plaza, Reilly, Shannon and Pally. Plaza and Pally had been at Upright Citizens Brigade together in the early 2000s, and Baena knew – and began collaborating on ideas with – Pally from playing basketball together. Baena sought out actor Paul Reiser, saying that Reiser's performance in Aliens "was really a seminal moment for me [Baena]"; they had lunch to discuss the film, with Baena happy to bring on a Jewish actor who he felt connected with the material. He also wanted to get another filmmaker, Garry Marshall, to act in the film and managed to connect with him through Fred Roos, who had served with Marshall in the Korean War and was friends with Life After Beth executive producer Francis Ford Coppola. Life After Beth was one of Marshall's last acting roles.
Anna Kendrick joined the cast when Plaza, a close friend, asked her to be in the film with the prospect of fighting her. Plaza also brought on Parks and Recreation castmates Nick Offerman and Jim O'Heir for brief cameos. Kendrick, Shannon, Hines, Reiser and Matthew Gray Gubler were announced to have joined during the first week of filming. Principal photography fit into Gubler's break between seasons of Criminal Minds; filming also began two weeks after DeHaan wrapped filming on The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and (per Baena) ran simultaneous with Reilly filming for Guardians of the Galaxy.
Filming Principal photography began in Los Angeles on July 8, 2013, though Baena had originally intended to film it in his hometown of Miami, and lasted 22 shooting days. The opening scene, of Beth hiking, had been shot in 2012; Baena had originally not intended to show Beth prior to her death in the film but decided contextualizing some of her personality would be interesting as a cold open.