The last film in the ‘After’ series, After Everything is probably the most honest and logical one.
We have all heard of the trope of a good girl falling for a bad boy only to change him by the end. In all honesty, we even enjoy watching this narrative because it’s also the trope we grew up watching in 90’s Bollywood – leading ladies fixing broken men and turning them into someone ‘marriage material’. Call it guilty pleasure or love for escapist romantic dramas, the 5-part ‘After’ series does have a cult fan following and After Everything, the fifth and final piece in this series of films, makes a lot of sense.
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As the name suggests, Hardin is a hard-complicated man to understand with a traumatic childhood, while Tessa is the sweet-innocent angel-like girl craving for danger. It’s as if Fifty Shades of All met damsel in distress! This cliche story is divided into five films – After, where it all begins; they meet, fall in love, and break apart as the truth of a bet is revealed. After We Collided is where they fight each other and finally make up. After We Fell is when both realise that their ambitions and what they want from life are in two separate directions and hence they break up again. After Ever Happy is technically when everything should have fallen into place and it almost did after both of themsort their problems out but they still don’t end up together. And the answer to that lies in After Everything! This film gives a chance for every tension between the couple to brew for a while but it’s not brewed very well, IMO!
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In each film, Hardin and Tessa break up and then get back together before repeating this in the sequel. This tells you that both of them need to work on themselves and grow before they get back together. Everyone has a traumatic past includingTessa, which messes her up. But she chooses to move on rather than be bitter about it, something Hardin struggles with doing. But you know how these mysterious bad boys are always shown to be controlling, jealous, perpetually looking for a fight, angry all the time, hiding and nursing a deep dark wound? Hardin is the poster child for this and what he needs to do is introspect why he’s wired like this. He needs to unlearn his patterns, stop hiding behind them as a defense mechanism and correct his previous mistakes in order to move on and grow up. And that’s exactly what this finale offers him.
Apart from an ode to their love story, After Everything is dedicated to him. The dark, mysterious hero working on himself is something we never get to see in cliche romantic dramas, which is why, After Everything is the most honest and genuine compared to the previous four films. What started as a Wattpad story, converted into a novel and is now a 5-part film series with many fans all over the world. While this series isn’t the finest, it’s not a bad love story and let’s be honest, there’s always an audience for steamy scenes!
