Abhiroop Das
Written and directed by Jeff Baena, ‘Life After Beth’ adds a whole new dimension to the quintessential zombie story by interpreting it as a metaphor for grief. A week after her death from a snake bite, Beth mysteriously comes back from her grave, leaving her parents and her boyfriend equally confused, but unequally relieved. As Zach spends more time with this revived version of Beth, he realizes that she may be a bona fide zombie, complete with all the characteristic traits. As his attempts to rekindle their relationship morph into a race for survival, Zach learns the true meaning of love, human or otherwise. By the end of the horror comedy movie, the enigma surrounding Beth’s revival pushes Zach into making the hardest of choices, all to figure out what he really wants out of life. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Life After Beth Plot Synopsis
‘Life After Beth’ begins with Beth Slocum hiking up a hill while distracted by her phone when a venomous snake bites her. The bite turns out to be fatal, and she soon passes away, leaving behind her grieving parents, Maury and Greenie, and her boyfriend, Zach. As the days pass, Zach finds himself wholly incapable of moving on from Beth’s death and resorts to clinging to any and all of her items for comfort. While he generally maintains a good relationship with Maury and Greenie, that changes one single night, when he walks up to find their home locked shut. When they refuse to receive his calls as well, Zach grows curious and tries to peek into the house, and, to his horror, discovers Beth walking in and out of the rooms.
A shocked Zach forces his way into the Slocums’ house, angrily believing that they faked her death for an insurance scam. That, however, isn’t the case, and Maury reveals that Beth seemingly rose from the dead and returned to the house a week after her death. Moreover, she seems to have no recollection of her death, and her parents have ensured that things remain that way. While Zach is initially left bewildered by this incident, he buries all concerns at the mere idea of reuniting with Beth. The conditions for them hanging out are strict, as the Slocums cannot afford to have Beth seen by anyone. Furthermore, too much sunlight leaves visible scarring on her body, limiting all her excursions to the night.
On one such night, Beth and Zach go to the beach, where she tries to play one of his compositions. However, that unintentionally causes her to break down, following which they rush back to her room in the attic. Zach is surprised to see that the entire room is covered in mud, as if meant to evoke the aesthetics of a casket. Spooked, he leaves before the duo can have sex, and soon begins to notice that several other people are also coming back from the dead. When he tries to relay his concerns to his childhood friend, Erica, Beth ambushes him in broad daylight, leaving everyone confused. From there, all hell breaks loose as a zombie apocalypse takes over the town, causing Beth to lose her mind and become a cannibal, eating her dad in the process. Faced with a moral dilemma, Zach has to trick Beth out of the house under the pretext of a hike, knowing that there might be no other way to resolve the crisis.
Life After Beth Ending: Is Beth Dead For Good?
At the end of ‘Life After Beth,’ Zach shoots the zombie version of Beth in the head, putting an end to her rampage. While Beth technically never returned to life in the first place, the scene is meant to mark her second and final death. However, that doesn’t mean that the chances of her resurrecting once again are completely eliminated. In fact, the lack of clear answers in the narrative suggests that such a cycle can just as easily repeat. The only way to permanently end a zombie seems to be burning them, either by force or by an extended exposure to sunlight. However, Beth’s surprise resistance to this method of erasure, coupled with the oven blocking most of the sunlight, means that she never burns to her death on-screen.
The last we see of Beth is her tumbling down the hill after getting shot, before she lands next to a bushy rock and is presumably crushed under the weight of the oven. While this seems like a definitive end at first, we have seen zombies in the movie still move after sustaining enormous injuries. Given that she isn’t burning to her death either, there is a very good chance that Beth is still alive, and perhaps even conscious on some level. While the zombies don’t have any healing abilities, their cannibalistic desires still pose enough of a threat to Zach and his family, especially as Beth desperately wants to resume her relationship with him, no matter the cost. As such, while the story ends with an indication of Beth’s death, there are enough seeds of doubt left to keep the truth in the dark.
Although Beth’s death cannot be fully determined, the movie wraps up her arc on a much deeper level, specifically in terms of how Zach remembers her. As the premise of ‘Life After Beth’ heavily draws from the mythology of Orpheus and Eurydice, much of its thematic conversation is about death and the nature of mourning. In a way, Beth comes back because of Zach’s inability to let go of his past, and it is only after things go completely out of hand that he comes to realize how that mindset can be self-destructive. To that end, Zach ends the movie by bringing closure to his dynamic with Beth and essentially putting her to rest, both in body and in soul.
Is the Zombie Apocalypse Over? How Did They Come to Life?
While ‘Life After Beth’ has a relatively clear-cut answer to the question of Beth’s death, the fate of the entire zombie apocalypse is dealt with in much more ambiguous terms. Our only source of information appears to be a shady-looking news report, wherein a journalist nervously claims that the apocalypse has come to an end, and that people can slowly begin reconnecting with their normal lives. While Zach and his family are quick to believe this information, several minor details about the news feed generate suspicion. Firstly, the journalist never explains how and why the apocalypse came to an end, and even shudders at the sight of a mysterious man walking by. To that end, it is possible that he is being coerced into making a false report, possibly to lower the town’s guard.
Although the journalist’s take on the apocalypse is questionable at best, there are many other moments in the final sequence that vaguely lend some credence to his words. In particular, we see Zach and his family pay a visit to Beth and Maury’s grave before getting back in their car and driving away. The calm nature of the scene suggests that there are no zombies for Zach and his family to be afraid of. While that can mean that all the undead have already been dealt with, there is also a chance that things are only safe in broad daylight. Zach’s plan to flee to Machu Picchu also places a ritualistic emphasis on the sun as the sole counter to the zombies, and given the mysterious nature of their disappearance or death, the town can perhaps never rest easy ever again.
One thing that is as confusing as the mass death of the zombies, if not more, is their appearance in the first place. While we are initially led to believe that Beth’s revival is a one-off incident, the postman’s arrival changes things. As it stands, there are several possible interpretations for the origins of the zombies, such as Beth’s comeback, starting a chain reaction. Another possibility is that Zach’s song, a direct nod to Orpheus’ music, is what triggers a mass reawakening of people from the dead. However, with the movie not leaning in on either of these ideas fully, the exact reason for the apocalypse continues to be a mystery. Following their emergence, the zombies quickly reveal themselves to be a physical manifestation of grief, and how its unmanaged forms can eat away at a person, both literally and spiritually.
Do Zach and Erica End up Together?
In the final scene of the movie, Zach asks Erica out for dinner, and she accepts, before the family merrily rides off into the sunset. With this, the story strongly suggests that a relationship is budding between the two, and in the future, they might become more than just friends. In a way, this development gives the title of the movie, ‘Life After Beth,’ its true meaning. Despite the premise being a zombie apocalypse, the heart of the story has always been Zach’s emotional recovery from the death of his partner. While he is still deeply in love with Beth, he also recognizes that he has to stop the past from suffocating his present, and a big step toward that is moving on with his life. To that end, Erica doesn’t come into the story as the next Beth, but rather a fresh start for both herself and Zach.
Early on in their interaction, we learn that Zach and Erica know each other through their mothers’ dancing connection. Additionally, both Zach and Erica have seemingly always wanted to dance themselves, and while the movie never returns to this idea, it nonetheless has thematic relevance. The turning point in the movie comes precisely when Zach tries to sing a song for Beth, not knowing that it will have a supernatural effect on her psyche. By sharp contrast, Zach and Erica are depicted as characters who bond over music and dance, showing how she, as a human, can assert her desires without the constraints that hold back a zombie consciousness.
Another major moment of growth for both Zach and Erica is in how they change after the onset of the zombie apocalypse. At the start, she appears to be completely unaware of the small shifts happening in her surroundings, and even fails to recognize that Beth is a zombie. However, by the end of the movie, we learn that Erica has also had to get her hands dirty in order to survive, by killing her own revived grandmother. Immediately following the incident, Erica, visibly traumatized, is left a shell of her former self. That changes in the movie’s ending, however, when we see her smile for the first time in quite some time after saying yes to Zach’s dinner date. With both characters emerging out of the apocalypse with a renewed appreciation for life, it is fitting that they step into the next chapter of their life together.
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