‘Some relationships just won’t die’
Burying the Ex is a 2014 comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante (Piranha – 1978; The Howling; Gremlins and its sequel; The Hole) from a screenplay by Alan Trezza, based on his 2008 short film of the same name. It stars Anton Yelchin, Ashley Greene, Alexandra Daddario, and Oliver Cooper.
This ArtImage Entertainment/Scooty Woop Entertainment/Act 4 Entertainment premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 4, 2014.
Plot teaser:
Max (Anton Yelchin), an all-around nice guy, and his overbearing but incredibly beautiful girlfriend, Evelyn (Ashely Greene). Their relationship takes a nosedive after they decide to move in together and Evelyn turns out to be a controlling, manipulative nightmare.
Max realizes it’s time to call it quits, but there’s just one problem: he’s too afraid to break up with her. Fate steps in when Evelyn is involved in a freak accident and dies, leaving Max single and ready to mingle.
Several weeks later, he has a chance encounter with Olivia (Alexandra Daddario), a cute and spirited girl who just might be his soul mate.
But that same night, Evelyn returns from the grave as a dirt-smeared zombie and she’s determined to live happily ever after with Max …
Reviews:
“There’s just enough blood on screen to keep gore hounds happy without turning off those who came primarily for the comedy or a little romance and the film switches gears between genres with Dante’s customary ease, even if none of it goes particularly deep. Much of the film’s humor is of course derived from death-related puns and wordplay, there are a couple of screwball situations and some of the zombie variations on mainstream-comedy standards are inspired, such as when Evelyn projectile-vomits embalming fluid all over her boyfriend. More contemporary-feeling are the antics of the rotund, often semi-naked womanizer Travis, who bring to mind a cheaper version of Seth Rogen…“Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter
“Along the way are a spare handful of amusing comic riffs (none better than a convoluted digression about a church-rock band called The Christian Slaters) and gross-out gags (none grosser than the oral expulsion of embalming fluid), but at just 89 minutes, there hardly seems enough material to fill the time. Watching two intelligent, attractive women fight to the death (or, well, beyond) over the dubiously worthy prize of Max is about as dramatically compelling as it is socially and sexually progressive.” Guy Lodge, Variety
“Overlit and with TV-show level sets and locations, half the time “Burying the Ex” looks more like an early episode of Buffy than a feature film, let alone one premiering inexplicably on the Lido. With a glut of rom-zom-coms recently, we can’t help but feel that Dante needed to do a little more than blow the dust off of his old bag of tricks in order to give people a reason to seek this one out … What we get here is not a reinvention, nor a reinterpretation, it’s the wholesale reanimation of something that had been buried for a long while. Like the shambling zombie corpse it is, initially we’re glad to see it come back to life, but pretty soon, for all its puns and Val Lewton references, it starts to decompose.” Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
