Review of After (2019) by Compi24 — 24 Apr 2019

Truly an anomaly in the purest sense, "After" is that rare "how did this ever get made?" type of movie that somehow manages to confound every sensibility in your head, whilst also making you feel like you as a filmmaker/screenwriter/etc.

can truly make it in the business someday. Based in large part on -- I sh*t you the Hell not -- a One Direction fan fiction from author Anna Todd, this film not only represents an utterly woeful piece of original storytelling, but a decidedly problematic one.

"Date sh*tty guys," the movie says. "It'll hurt, but it's the kind of hurt that you -- a useless, nothing of a little girl -- need," it says. Man, oh, man is there so much to hate about this brain-meltingly backwards film that somehow happens to be directed, produced, and written by predominately female filmmakers.

To think that you could adapt a pathetic fan-fiction based on a sh*tty pop culture item that no one cares about anymore would be so laughable if it wasn't already so depressingly familiar. And it doesn't even work as a fan-fiction, considering how the litigious removal of the actual band members' names renders this concept into something that no self-respecting human being would ever care to find out about prior to watching.

Without the fan-service fantasy in play, you end up with the vivisected trunk of a fan-fiction. Cardboard cutout characters. Tropes galore. A crippling misunderstanding of how to construct a cinematic plot.

And a clubfoot of a thematic cancer at the end of this horribly-intentioned, ugly leg of a movie.