Anyone who has watched NBC’s Parks and Recreation over the years can attest to the fact that Aubrey Plaza is very, very funny (even if her “break-out” film The To-Do List was not). And in Safety Not Guaranteed, she proved that her range extends far beyond quirky deadpan humor. Now, in this summer’s Life After Beth, she’s taking the bold move of both pushing into the horror genre and seizing what could be her most dramatic role to date. Plaza alone has put this one on our watchlist, but that she’s working alongside actors like Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Anna Kendrick and Molly Shannon is some pretty major icing on the cake.
A new clip from Life After Beth has hit the web today, centering on Beth’s boyfriend (DeHaan) as he attempts to make sense of finding her inexplicably alive after being told by her parents (Reilly and Shannon) that she had passed. It’s not a scary clip in any sense, but it does preview what’s sure to be a key part of the film.
Oddly, Life After Beth isn’t the first movie we’ve seen that has attempted to fuse the zombie horror and romantic comedy genres. In particular, Jonathan Levine’s Warm Bodies, about a zombie (Nicholas Hoult) living in post-apocalyptic America who falls in love with a human girl (Teresa Palmer) after eating her boyfriend’s brains, was remarkably funny and enjoyable for all its genre-splicing. Life After Beth looks to tackle a zombie-human romance with those roles reversed, focusing on a guy who is pursuing an undead girl.
Whether it will succeed in delivering laughs and scares remains to be seen, but we don’t have long to wait to find out. Life After Beth hits theaters on August 15th.
