Film Review: 'After We Fell'

A lot is changing in the life of Tessa Young (Josephine Langford), and she should be happy about it. She's just landed a position at a major publishing company in Seattle, her dream job in the city she's always wanted to live in. But the surprise arrival of her estranged alcoholic father Richard (Atanas Srebrev) has thrown Tessa for a loop. On top of that, things with her boyfriend Hardin Scott (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) are pretty rocky at the moment. Upset by the idea of Tessa relocating to Seattle rather than joining him in London, Hardin's jealousy and volatility rear their ugly heads again.

Despite their relationship being up on a tightrope once more, Tessa's undeniable love for Hardin keeps her hanging on. As she adjusts to her new life in Seattle, Tessa and Hardin work to keep their relationship alive. But with Hardin's emotional issues flaring up and a family secret sending the boy into a tailspin, it'll take all the strength these two have to keep their Jane Austen-esque love story from coming to an end.

Another After installment, another movie that makes my blood boil and makes me worry about the romantic ideals of this franchise's fans. It becomes clear right out of the gates that Hardin is still the same and that After We Fell is going to be another cycle of Tessa and Hardin getting into fights and making up despite not going through any meaningful development. My hopes that the twist at the end of After We Collided would lead to something good were also dashed. After the first 10 minutes, the subplot about Tessa reconnecting with her alcoholic father is abruptly dropped in favor of just following Tessa and Hardin as they go about their uninteresting lives. As soon as Hardin appears onscreen, he's his usual arrogant self, being needlessly hostile with Richard and getting upset with Tessa for wanting to give her father a second chance. Considering the multiple second chances Tessa has given Hardin, he has absolutely no room to pass judgment on anyone else.

Hardin's attitude only gets more aggravating once it's revealed that he's angry about Tessa getting accepted for a job opportunity in Seattle. Rather than celebrate his girlfriend's accomplishments, Hardin of course makes it all about himself by complaining about how this clashes with his plan for him and Tessa to move to London together. Mind you, these are plans Hardin made without talking to Tessa, yet he acts like Tessa went behind his back by not building her life around her boyfriend. This is just one of many toxic things Hardin says and does over the course of the movie:

1. He enables Richard's alcoholism, casually brushes off Tessa's valid concerns about it, and uses sex to "apologize."

2. He immediately gets jealous over a waiter Tessa flirts with to spite Hardin for talking to an old female friend (an admittedly slimy move on Tessa's part), to the point of having some overdramatic nightmares about the two having sex. This might've been more understandable if Tessa's "flirting" wasn't so unconvincing or if the waiter had shown any real sign of wanting to hook up with Tessa.

3. He questions if Tessa is only going to Seattle to be with her old co-worker Trevor Matthews and storms off like a toddler when she admits to having had some fleeting feelings for Trevor. Remember, those feelings emerged at a time when Tessa and Hardin were broken up.

4. He gets upset at Tessa having accepted the phone number of the aforementioned waiter, despite having used his friend Lillian to make Tessa jealous after the incident detailed in #3. He also admits he doesn't trust Tessa around other guys (even if he tries to justify it by saying it's "just the other guys" he doesn't trust) and smugly insinuates that Tessa only got the Seattle job because of his influence and not because of her talent. It's just a whole gross tirade that Hardin's father Ken tries to convince Tessa was only a result of Hardin "loving her so much" and "being afraid of losing her."

5. It takes one of Hardin's waiter nightmares to go visit Tessa in Seattle. The sequence of Hardin trying to play nice after reading something Tessa wrote about how much he's hurt her is ruined by Hardin still having a paranoid belief that Tessa might end up cheating on him with a guy she hung out with one time.

Tessa's writing about how much pain her relationship with Hardin has caused her just spells out how destructive her relationship with him is. But rather than being used as part of an arc where Tessa sees how abusive Hardin is and leaves him, it's just another part of the Fight-Apology-Makeup Sex routine that is Tessa and Hardin's "love." The return of Tessa's estranged father also could've been used in service of a plotline where Tessa and Hardin finally realize how bad they are together. You'd think seeing Richard Young promise to get better for Tessa while audibly/visually drunk would spark an epiphany in Hardin and make him see how alike he and Richard are: they both make grand promises to change that they don't keep. Instead, the moment goes nowhere and Atanas Srebrev's authentic performance as a troubled, morally ambiguous addict is used to no significant effect.

What makes Hardin's romanticized abuse worse in this instance is how Tessa seems much more submissive to it now. In the last movie, Tessa was much more willing to get in Hardin's face about his terrible actions. Here, apart from one scene where she beautifully puts him on blast, Tessa mostly takes Hardin's cruelty with a stoic face. Whether this is a consequence of poor screenwriting/direction or Josephine Langford becoming as done with this series as I am is up for debate. We also have Tessa's so-called friends and associates who pour salt in the wound by insisting she and Hardin are good together and lowkey gaslighting Tessa into believing that Hardin has "changed for the better" thanks to her. Apart from his offscreen GPA boost, nothing from this movie or the previous two provide any evidence that Tessa's presence has really made Hardin any less of a controlling jerk with a violent streak. Christian and Kimberly do the most of this, sullying their once wholly likable characters.

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW

But speaking of character sullying, After We Fell does plenty of that in its final minutes. While After We Collided dragged Noah and Carol through the mud, this movie picks Christian and Hardin's mother Trish as its victims. While she spends the entire film eagerly preparing to get married, the final act has Hardin walk in on Trish having kitchen sex with Christian. While I'm usually the first to condemn Hardin for his short temper, in this instance, I'm totally on his side when he starts insulting his mother and beating up Christian. While the surprise reveal that Christian is actually Hardin's biological father is seemingly meant to justify his and Trish's dalliances, it doesn't even come close to doing so. Despite apparently still being in love, Trish and Christian have both led their respective partners on and betrayed them. There's no excuse for that, and the fact that Trish goes through with her wedding to Mike the night after she had sex with another man is absolutely disgusting.

A few good things do inadvertently come from this whole mess. Arielle Kebbel gives a sympathetic performance as Kimberly, the only person in this situation deserving of any sympathy. While it's definitely frustrating that Kimberly is determined to stay with a man who's cheating on her, her motivation is understandable. She loves her stepson Smith and, despite his treachery, she still loves Christian. It would be nice if Tessa seeing Kimberly swallow her pain for the sake of her unfaithful fiancé ends up being the thing that inspires her to dump Hardin and avoid meeting a similar fate. But considering the final shot of this film, I doubt that'll be happening. It's a lovely final scene that makes beautiful use of The Fray's Never Say Never, so it's a shame it's wasted on a couple I would've preferred to see get run over by a truck.

Spoilers Over

About half the performances of After We Fell don't stand out in any big way. Most of the actors either give bland performances or are stuck playing characters who hardly get to do anything. As opposed to the previous After installment, Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin seem to be going through the motions, bringing little to no charm to Tessa and Hardin this time around. To Tiffin's credit, even though he's stuck playing an overall unlikable lead, he does get the chance to show some emotional range as Hardin is put through the wringer by some distressing revelations. Chance Perdomo is a likable enough Shane Paul McGhie replacement as Landon, who is the closest we get to a friend of Tessa's who calls Hardin out--albeit jokingly--for being a sulky prick. Other well-acted recasts include Stephen Moyer as benevolent (until the events detailed in the Spoiler section) boss Christian Vance and Arielle Kebbel as his lovable fiancée Kimberly.

On the other side of the coin, returning stars Louise Lombard and Rob Estes barely factor into the story at all as Hardin's parents Trish and Ken, with the former having her character mangled by the same events that derail Christian. In new cast members, Kiana Madeira has her talent squandered as thus far pointless side character Nora (fingers crossed After Ever Happy gives her something to chew on) while Carter Jenkins does a decent job as conflict-triggering waiter Robert. It says something that Robert has no characterization outside of being handsome and generically friendly, yet he's still more appealing than Hardin.

If After We Fell insisted on continuing to pass off Tessa and Hardin's unhealthy romance as "true love," it could've at least done so in an entertaining way. Instead, this film meanders about for the entire hour and 38 minutes, bouncing from one dull scene to another. It's kind of sick how their destructive relationship is the only memorable thing about Tessa and Hardin; otherwise, they have the combined personality of a melted ice cube. While there's some talent to be found in this film's cast, it all gets buried under a parade of awful characters and a story that'll make your eyelids heavy instead of making your heart flutter. Excuse the obvious pun, but After We Fell is the entry of this foul franchise that truly falls to the bottom of the barrel.

Score: 2 out of chlorine free ultra thin pads.