After Ever Happy 2022 Movie Review

The After franchise is a curious franchise. You took an idea from a series of books that by themselves had their story stretched to a larger number of books than it should have, and then what did they do? They applied this and transformed the same idea to cinemas, a completely different medium, where now with After – After the Promise ( After Ever Happy, 2022), the After franchise arrives in its fourth film.

Promised as the last in the franchise, the feature guarantees with some tricks that the story of the couple Tessa (Josephine Langford) and Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) continues. The first movie released in 2019 was the one that established the relationship between the two and gave a north to the franchise in general, and really put the duo of actors on the map, brought the legion of fans of the books to theaters, or at least, that’s what should have happened, after all in terms of box office the films never performed very well. The ceiling is the nearly $70 million worldwide that the first film made, never been beaten, where later films have only seen the box office go down movie after movie.

But let’s also face it, After never seemed to take off much outside of the virtual bubble itself. Perhaps, due to the fact that throughout the four films, the plot always delivered the same story, told only in another way, at another moment in this couple’s life, and that feeling of being following a high school romance seen in the first film, It kind of gets lost over the course of the other films, the fact that the characters even see their lives changed, but this conflicted, carnal and explosive romance never goes forward, never evolves, and the characters never come out of it either.

Thus, this biting and blowing game that is marked by the franchise. And with the promise that After the Promise would be the final chapter of Hessa’s journey, the bittersweet feeling when we see that this isn’t real makes the movie really sound like yet another middling chapter in the franchise’s history. Of course, After – After the Promise is infinitely better than After – After the Truth (2020) and After – After the Mismatch (2021), but here you can’t even talk about it as if it were a positive thing, after all, the ruler was there below. The only justification, perhaps, is that with this film, their relationship will finally start to change the status quo of the dynamics of the main couple a little bit.

And by including the two protagonists in a more adult environment and that actions have consequences – even if here Hardin sets a house on fire after discovering the question of who his father is in the last film – perhaps it benefited the film. Anyway, maybe this scene is the beginning of the character’s rehabilitation journey. In After – After the Promise , the story literally picks up where the previous movie left off, where we started as a recap of the ones we see in a series (and it left me wondering why this story wasn’t adapted into a series right at the beginning?), with Tessa and Hardin at a wedding, where they continue to participate with two gigantic gigs, him on account of finding out what he found out, and she on account of him being completely closed off and not talking to her.

The funniest thing is how things are repeated, and that every movie has a flurry of new characters that enter the plot without the slightest sense, and that only serve to orbit the main characters, whether it’s Hardin’s half-brother, young Landon (Chance Perdomo) , her friend Nora (Kiana Madeira) or even Kimberly (Arielle Kebbel who replaced another actress) and Christian Vance (Stephen Moyer who also replaced another actor).

All of them have their stories intimately told, only if they have the main ones on the side and on the scene, but for many even that is not possible. At least in this movie, Madeira has more than just two lines like it was in the previous feature. And in After – After the Promise , all these characters are there to deflect Hurricane Hessa as Hardin’s paternity conflict affects the boy and of course the relationship that seemed to be going well.

The funniest thing about After’s text are the justifications for the characters’ actions, as they do to avoid marital arguments, where everything always goes in the most bizarre way possible. It’s driving a car through rural London, walking the streets barefoot in winter, going to a punk rock party, moving to New York for a fresh start, throwing your partner that you can’t get pregnant and all that.

The couple always makes a big snowball in several mini narrative arcs, between a spicier scene here and there, and that here once again the film repeats this dynamic. So, as the couple splits up for the 10th time (any fan must have this straight), Tessa starts a new job and Hardin goes to an alcoholic support group and fixes the manuscript of the book he’s been writing about the alcoholic. relationship of the two.

I feel like Langford and Tiffin have gotten used to playing these characters and really have nowhere else to go with them in terms of acting. In technical terms, as international as After – After the Promise may sound because of its locations, the production value of the feature is still considered low for a film that has a theatrical release. It’s all too simple, too weak, and without a necessary shine.

In the end, I think the After franchise could have fewer movies or be a TV series on a streaming platform. It would still be the best option for the franchise that kind of looked like it would conclude its journey already in this story, but from what was shown in the final scenes, it just proves that there is still more to tell, even though this story has already been more than stretched and reheated. Because as far as the carriage goes, there are still a lot of things to happen after After – After the Promise.