After Ever Happy Review: #Hessa’s Toxicity is Never Ending

After Ever Happy is a romantic drama film and is the fourth in the franchise of the After series. The film follows Hardin and Tessa after the shocking truths about their families emerge, leaving them broken. Will they be able to repair their relationship and move forward or will this be the end for #Hessa?

The movie is based on a novel by the same name written by Anna Todd and has a runtime of 95 minutes.

– Mild Spoilers –

After Ever Happy Review

You know you can make a compelling movie that talks about toxic relationships and how and why people choose to stay in them. What do they think when they choose to stay with a partner who is clearly not good for their mental and physical health? You can show these moments and make the narrative seem like a bad thing.

The problem with movies like After, 365 Days and 50 Shades of Grey is that they are showcased to be romantic movies and promote these toxic and destructive characters as people with just a little bit of issues that their unwitting partners would do away with using the power of their love. It’s cute, right? It’s cute when the toxic partner screams and shouts and doesn’t let their partners do things on their own – the jealousy is so hot.

Actually, guys, it’s not. It’s not cute, and neither is it attractive to dump your issues on your partner without doing any work. It’s destructive for young minds to think that it is ok for people to behave like this with you.

Anyway, I sort of digress. This isn’t a PSA.

Coming to After Ever Happy – I remember watching the first film and cringing at everything about the movie – Its cringe voiceover, shockingly bad characters, and horrid acting. The sluggish storyline and how no one really goes through any growth. They either fight less or fight more, but that’s about it.

I then went through the horror of reading the Wattpad entries, and they were honestly worse than this. The movies are a watered-down version of the horrors that lurk within those horrid novels, which honestly just says a lot about a lot of things in this movie.

Fortunately or unfortunately for us, After Ever Happy is as boring and crappy as its predecessors – it makes no sense, it doesn’t make you feel any feeling other than abject boredom and sometimes extreme hatred, and the characters are just falling apart, as usual.

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Interestingly, the supporting characters’ faces all keep changing as we move from one stupid sequel to another. It takes a good 15 minutes to understand who is who now because no one wants to keep having the same dysfunctional relationship with literally everyone in their lives and scream.

Also interesting is the fact that none of the relationships in this sordid tale is good. Like, every relationship is falling apart at the seams. Hardin’s mother? Yeah, she’s great, but she’s also cheating on her husband and has consistently done so. Kimberly is sweet? Yeah, she knows that the father of her unborn child is having an affair. Why is no one going to see a therapist in this show? Why do you like chaos in your life to such a degree?

The lead pair, meanwhile, is just intolerable and whiny and takes no responsibility for their actions. They continue to bicker and have sex – if they’re not doing one, they are doing the other. Tessa trying to move on with her life? Nope, Hardin won’t let her in spite of knowing fully well that he’s dragging her into his crappy crap.

Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin still have no chemistry, and watching them having sex (or whatever they have) is painful and makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Hardin’s still an alcoholic and still breaks things when his feefees get hurt, so you know, not much change there.

Actually, nothing has changed; everyone’s still the same. Cheaters are still making excuses for their cheating, Tessa is still being a doormat and Hardin’s, well, he’s still being him. The movie feels unnecessary and rushed but, at the same time, is extremely slow. Half of the time, it’s a little unsure when or where we are in the movie’s timeline, but I feel like you wouldn’t care most of the time anyway.

I don’t understand these characters and their motivations, to be very honest. Hardin runs away from his problems and constantly throws a pity party for himself for the smallest of inconveniences. I get needing time, but man, he’s so toxic that it’s cringe watching Tessa being sad after he invariably hurts her for the thousandth time.

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They continue on this cycle over and over again, and after Tessa pushes him away for the 10th time in the movie, trying to find herself, you know they are going to end up in the same cycle within the next 10 minutes. It’s frustrating to watch this and After Ever Happy, thus, feels wholly unnecessary and extremely frustrating. After a while, you stop feeling bad for Tessa because she knowingly goes into this mess when she should be running in the opposite direction.

Summing Up

The movie starts with Hardin, after getting to know the truth about his parents, gets shit-faced and commits arson. Tessa rewards him by having sex with him. That’s it; that says everything about the movie and the series as a whole. #Hessa really needs to stop existing for the good of humanity.

However, nothing is more horrible than Hardin’s shoulder tattoo or Tessa’s god-awful wig that has that fake bang. I seriously don’t understand what is up with that.

After Ever Happy is streaming on Netflix.