After – After the Promise Couple Hessa again in a game of bite and blow in a weak film
The After franchise is a curious franchise. You took an idea from a series of books that in themselves already had their story stretched out into a larger number of books than there should have been, and then what did you do? They applied this and transformed the same idea into cinemas, a completely different medium, where now with After – After Ever Happy, 2022, the After franchise reaches its fourth film.
Promised to be the last in the franchise, the film ensures with some tricks that the story of the couple Tessa (Josephine Langford) and Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) continues. The first film released in 2019 was the one that established their relationship and gave direction to the franchise in general, and really put the acting duo on the map, brought the legion of fans of the books to the cinemas, 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 almost 70 million dollars worldwide that the first film made, it was never beaten, where later films only saw the box office decline film after film.
Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin in a scene from After
Photo: Voltage Pictures/Diamond Filmes
But let’s also face it, After never seemed to take off much outside of its own virtual bubble. Perhaps, due to the fact that throughout the four films, the plot always delivered the same story, told just in a different way, at another moment in this couple’s life, and that feeling of following a high school romance seen in the first film, It kind of gets lost throughout the other films, due to the fact that the characters even see their lives being changed, but this conflicting, carnal and explosive romance never moves forward, never evolves, and the characters never get out of it either.
Thus, this bite and blow game that is marked by the franchise. And with the promise that After would be the final chapter in Hessa’s journey, the bittersweet feeling when we see that this isn’t real makes the film really feel like another average chapter in the franchise’s history. Of course, After – After Promise is infinitely better than After – After Truth (2020) and After – After Desencontro (2021), but here even that can’t be talked about 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 begins to finally change the status quo of the main couple’s dynamics.
And by including the two protagonists in a more adult environment and where actions have consequences – even though here Hardin sets fire to a house after discovering the question of who his father is in the last film – perhaps it benefited the film. Anyway, perhaps this scene is the beginning of the character’s rehabilitation journey. In After, the story literally begins where the previous film ended, where we began as a recap of those we see in a series (and it left me wondering why this story wasn’t adapted into a series right from the beginning?), with Tessa and Hardin at a wedding, where they continue to participate with two giant beaks, he because he discovered what he discovered, and she because he completely closed himself off and doesn’t talk to her.
The funniest thing is how things repeat themselves, and that every film we have a flood of new characters who enter the plot without the slightest sense, and who only serve to orbit the main characters, be it Hardin’s half-brother, young Landon (Chance Perdomo), his friend Nora (Kiana Madeira) or even Kimberly (Arielle Kebbel who replaced another actress) and Christian Vance (Stephen Moyer who also replaced another actor).
They all have their stories intimately told, only if they have the main characters on the side and on stage, but for many this is not even possible. At least in this film Madeira has more than just two lines like it was in the previous feature. And in After, all these characters are there to avoid 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 is the justifications for the characters’ actions, how they do to avoid arguments as a couple, where everything always goes in the most outrageous way possible. It’s driving a car through the countryside of London, walking barefoot through the streets in winter, going to a punk rock party, moving to New York for a new start, telling your partner that you can’t get pregnant and everything in between.
The couple always builds a big snowball into several mini narrative arcs, between a more spicy scene here and there, and here once again the film repeats this dynamic. So, as the couple separates for the 10th time (some fan must have this right), Tessa
starts a new job and Hardin goes to a support group for alcoholics and works on the manuscript for the book he has been writing about their relationship.
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 due to its locations, the film’s production value is still considered low for a film that has a theatrical release. It’s all very simple, very weak, and without any necessary shine.
In the end, I think the After franchise could have fewer films or be a TV series on a streaming platform. It would still be the best option for the franchise, which kind of seemed like it would conclude its journey in this story, but from what was shown in the final scenes, it only proves that there is still more to tell, even if this story was already more than stretched and reheated. Because from the looks of it, there are still a lot of things to happen *after* After – After the Promise.
