After We Fell is dreadful teen-franchise filler
The third installment of this teen romance series lacks any spark
Film Reviews After
For those keeping track at home, we’re now three installments deep into a franchise that started as One Direction fan fiction before morphing into a sort of Fifty Shades Of Grey for teenagers. There’s no BDSM angle to the After films, however, probably because the real masochism is for those still watching along. To its credit, the latest entry, After We Fell, at least has a solid commitment to depicting safe sex in a positive light, which is a nice thing to model for the legions of young people who have made this college-set romantic melodrama such a financial success. But even teens deserve better than the warmed-over good girl/bad boy tropes the series continuously fails to enliven with each new entry. Though After We Fell aims for the scintillating eroticism of a lithe young couple risking getting caught with some semi-public hot tub sex, the whole experience is more akin to taking a lukewarm bath in a swimsuit.
Centered on the tortured love story of Type-A college freshman Tessa Young (Josephine Langford) and brooding British bad boy Hardin Scott (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), the After franchise is essentially a bland CW show stretched out over several movies. Yet even grading on that curve, After We Fell is very much a filler episode. After the second film became an unexpected pandemic-era box office smash, the series greenlit two more sequels to be filmed back-to-back in Bulgaria during the pandemic. To put it kindly, After We Fell definitely has the feeling of a film that was shot in Bulgaria during the middle of a global pandemic. Half of the cast either failed to return or were casually recast, not that you’d really notice when all the supporting players are so painfully forgettable to begin with.
There’s no plot to speak of, either. After We Fell clumsily picks up and then subsequently ignores a dad-centric cliffhanger from the last movie, only to finish with a literal “to be continued” ending of its own. In between those juicier bookends, the film runs down the clock with its immature, incommunicative central pairing. While the first film had an “Am I a fucking bet?” angle and the second introduced both a love triangle and a fake dating storyline, After We Fell doesn’t even bother coming up with a basic hook. The conflict ostensibly lies in Tessa’s decision to move to Seattle for her new publishing job and the question of whether Hardin will move there to be with her. Hilariously, this latest dramatic development joins the events of the first two films on the list of things that have happened within the span of Tessa’s freshman year of college. No 19-year-old has ever had a bigger rollercoaster of a fall and spring semester.
As with Fifty Shades or Twilight, there’s definitely potential for some “so bad it’s good” fun in the After series—especially in how much Hardin is a mess of poorly developed bad-boy clichés. (Fiennes Tiffin joins The Kissing Booth’s Jacob Elordi in the “punching people for no reason is hot” style of character construction.) The problem is that most of After We Fell is too boring to even lend itself to mockery. The movie comes close to the right lack of self-awareness in a scene where Hardin watches in increasing sexual fervor as Tessa does some basic white girl hip-swaying at an office party. But you’ve got to sit through an awful lot of stilted scene work to get there.
Sorely missed is Dylan Sprouse, who brought some fun verve as Hardin’s nerdy romantic rival in the second film. You mourn his absence but celebrate his good career choice to not return to this franchise. Even as young adult softcore, After We Fell is limp. Though the series switched over to an R rating starting with its previous installment, the repetitive sex scenes set to moody pop songs are lacking in anything resembling genuine heat, even as new series director Castille Landon tries to spice things up by adding hot tubs, phone sex, and gym equipment into the mix. In the end, this is a film only Afternators could love. But even they won’t miss much if they skip it.
23 Comments
They really should bring Dylan Sprouse to Riverdale as Jughead’s evil twin
Evil twin is too tame for Riverdale (they’ve prob done it before anyway)Make him an evil split-personality Jughead developed after the middle-school guidance counselor brainwashed him. Also they’re refereed to as Jekyllhead and JugHyde in show
If they haven’t done evil twin it is probably because he turned it down
In the recent spooky Archie line, Jughead got turned into a werewolf. It was pretty snazzy.
For those keeping track at home, we’re now three installments deep into a
franchise that started as One Direction fan fiction before morphing
into a sort of Fifty Shades Of Grey for teenagers.
Wake me when they get in to the sub-genre that is “One Direction during the Purge” fan fiction.
“Hero Fiennes Tiffin”What on earth is that name?
Look up his full name, it’s ludicrous and very “son-of-movie-folks”.
His parents’ surnames are Fiennes and Tiffin. Hero is the name of one of the characters in Much Ado About Nothing who herself was named after the Greek mythical character Hero (from the myth of Hero and Leander).
One wishes to scoff, but I named my son Leander, so am I any better?
And there are legions of female spawn named Mackenzie (which, er, means son of Kenneth) and male spawn called Randy or Clay (you’re either going to be sexually adventurous or named after mud, damnit!) so America is in no place to criticise!
It’s not particularly difficult to move out of the mindset of wanting to make fun of the names people’s parents give them. One just has to consider that every name is equally made-up, and that one’s own name would sound silly to a substantial portion of the world, and that one would not appreciate being mocked for it.
I myself have an unusual name, so I have always been aware of my own name sounding silly, not just to a substantial portion of the world, but to all of it. Why, N!xau himself would scratch his head at my name.
yes but actors routinely change their names so this one’s on him for not giving himself a more normal name. he clearly likes it.
Let’s all spare a thought for poor Mira Sorvino.
Anyone that makes fanfiction about real people really needs to look into therapy
Okay NOW I’m getting old because this is a franchise I never heard of and yet we’re three movies deep?
That’s what I came here to say. Every part of this is completely new to me except the name “Mira Sorvino”.
Stephen Moyer is “Beeeal” from True Blood.
Last night I followed the link to the review of the second “After” movie from last October, and it’s the rare movie review on this site without a single comment. Clearly people weren’t in the headspace to comment on Hero Fiennes Tiffin’s name or the general concept of R-rated erotica for YA audiences. I wonder what was going on in October 2020 that had people so distracted?
It’s almost as horrifying as yon Olsen twin movie empire. That’s just terrifying.
I went on Sporcle and did a bunch of pop culture related quizzes that were broken down by decade. I’m not surprised that my knowledge of recent stuff isn’t as good but I was shocked at how steep the fall off was. I aced everything up through 2010, but after that I barely outperformed a cat walking across the keyboard.
In 20 years, I can imagine a lot of people in their mid-thirties reminiscing on social media about how good these movies were.
she got a job in publishing after her first year of college????? clearly, this is a total fantasy film.