Plaza gives the film its motor, and if Baena's control of the material is occasionally uncertain, 'Life After Beth' plays best when it feeds off her manic, gonzo energy, and runs with it.

| Jun 18, 2016

Getting people in creepy makeup to gurn and shuffle and get shot isn't automatically scary plus hilarious.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 5, 2014

Plaza steals the show with one foot in the grave, her rotting heroine ricocheting between adolescent snarkiness and cadaverous rage, a lethal combination of which no one around her has the measure.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2014

Good effort. Great actors. But a missed opportunity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2014

It's an age-old story. Boy loses girl. Boy finds girl. Boy realises girl is undead.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 3, 2014

We must surely now be getting close to some sort of zombie saturation point, with even the zomromcom becoming a distinct subsubgenre. On Beth's evidence, however, there's life in the undead yet.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2014

The comedy inherent in a human/zombie love pairing doesn't get this tired and unambitious genre pastiche very far.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 2, 2014

Life After Beth finds a fresh angle to work and the right cast to work it. There's death in the genre yet.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 2, 2014

Once it's safely slotted in the overworked zom-com genre, there's no reason to keep watching.

| Sep 4, 2014

Baena co-wrote "I Heart Huckabees" and while he has a sense of humor, the jokes here tend to be meager and tend to dribble on.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 4, 2014

While Baena tries to offer a reworking of zombie mythology - easy-listening music makes them horny and they have a fascination with attics and smearing dirt on walls - the movie doesn't live up to the promise of its dark start.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 2, 2014

Among many missteps is a total tonal identity crisis. Plaza has described Beth as a "zom-com-rom-dram." (N.B. This remark is more clever than anything in the movie it describes.)

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 29, 2014

Halfway through, the story loses momentum, becoming a listless, predictable Saturday Night Live skit.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 22, 2014

The movie runs out of steam, though not blood, long before it's over.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 21, 2014

"Life After Beth" may have revived the ultimate girlfriend from hell, but it's still wan, listless and derivative in bringing her to undead life.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 21, 2014

A quirky spirit pervasive throughout and great supporting cast, including Anna Kendrick, make it a semi-satisfying "zomb-edy."

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 21, 2014

This is a talented comedic cast, but in the second half of the film they don't get to do a lot that's funny.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 21, 2014

Plaza, whose wide-eyed stare suggests a zombie as painted by Margaret Keane, plausibly navigates Beth's journey into full-throttle Linda Blair demonic dementia.

| Aug 21, 2014

In 'Life After Beth,' Dane Dehaan is, pretty much, the straight man to Aubrey Plaza as Beth; who does a great job and never winks at the audience.

| Original Score: 2.1/2 | Aug 15, 2014

"Life After Beth" gets into the well-tread zombie-comedy territory in a clever and inspired way. Then it doesn't get out of it nearly so skillfully.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 15, 2014