Well… it had to end eventually. I mean, yeah, this still has a prequel and sequel in the works, but as far as the main story that is the increasingly fucked-up relationship of Hardin and Tessa, this is meant to be the finale. And with the unholy bombshell that the last film ended with, I am once again morbidly curious about how they could possibly follow that up and, more pertinently, how they could make things even worse. And sure enough, they found a way.
Now that the true extent of Hardin’s crappy behaviour has been made clear, having spent pretty much all of the previous films mining his girlfriend’s trauma for writing material behind her back, the dumbest way to go from there would surely be to follow Hardin as the solo main character, right? Well, that’s what they did, as we go a year later to find Hardin drowning his sorrows in Portugal. Because even these films can’t escape the allure of a paid vacation on film.
Along with continuing to fellate itself by having character in-universe talking about how much they love the book After (oh, and casually saying that it should be made into a movie and Harry Styles should play Hardin, because we must be punished for our sins), we also discover that that isn’t even the first time that Hardin has exposed a lover without their consent. And that’s in the film’s own words too, as Hardin reconnects with an old flame Nathalie (Mimi Keene) who, years BEFORE (get it?!), Hardin had filmed when they had sex together, which he then shared through their public circle on a bet, and she had to retreat to Portugal to escape the attention. It’s like they’re actively trying to make us hate Hardin at this point.
Considering the finale of After Ever Happy (still the dumbest title for a movie I’ve ever seen, even more so than Spycies), deciding to double-down on how shitty Hardin is as a human being is… a choice, certainly, but the way they go about tying the two narrative threads together is also pretty bad. For most of the film, we’re just watching Hardin mope around, drown his sorrows, and need to build up to realising that he’s been a shitperson. When it gets to the point of Sebastian (Benjamin Mascolo) confronting and later kicking the shit out of Hardin, not only does it feel wholly deserved by that point, but even that is offset by bad writing seeing as Hardin is the one who ends up in jail for what happened. Not sure how that’s supposed to work.
The truly aggravating part of all this is that, while Hardin is wallowing in self-pity and making a mockery of anyone who has actually gone through writer’s block, I get what they’re trying to do with him. Hell, I’ll even admit that I have some sympathy for what he’s going through. I (hopefully) haven’t pulled anything as shitty as this, but I have been the shitperson in a relationship before. I recognise that feeling of digging deep into your own guilt, knowing that you fucked up but not having the strength to do anything other than sink further into it.
However. There is a marked difference between wielding that self-pity as an excuse to continue self-destructing, and actually doing something about it and making amends. Hardin is adamantly stuck in just brooding about his mistakes, and doesn’t do a whole lot to actually show he’s becoming a better person. The story treats forgiveness as if it’s ‘owed’ to him because he feels bad about what he did, with Nathalie and even Tessa later on being way too quick to let him off the hook for what he did. I get it, people can grow and move on, but the way that this film presents such things is… troubling, to say the least. I found my own closure for what I did, and was able to make amends, but I got lucky with that opportunity; it’s not healthy to think that becoming a better person is dependent on being forgiven by those you have wronged. People aren’t owed a goddamn thing from those they have fucked over.
Hell, even if we take the film at face value, the ‘growth’ we see from Hardin is not great. The most we get is that, now when he writes about other people’s embarrassing shit and publishes it for fun and profit, he asks them beforehand. He’s still possessive, impulsive, and phenomenally unhealthy as his own person and as a romantic partner, but hey, at least he’s ‘learning’. Because men must be applauded when they do the bare fucking minimum, apparently.
The focus on Hardin’s nothingburger of a character arc means that all of the actual fun(ny) shit that has made me enjoy these films, however ironically, isn’t even here at the final stretch. Instead, we’re stuck with tired vacation-core storytelling, a face-first admission of how screwed-up these characters are, and a script desperately trying to make us accept them for it. At this point, the entertainment value is just gone, and all that’s left is an empty husk signifying all the inherent problems with this 5th wave of YA cinema. There can only be an ‘After’ when something has stopped, and quite frankly, that’s all I want from this series at this point.
No comments:
Post a Comment