Critic Reviews

The real problem with After is that it’s a lifeless slog of thinly written clichés, one that’s missing the charismatic spark of the actual One Direction boys.

An innocuous teen pulp soap opera that flirts with “danger” but, in fact, keeps surprising you with how mild and safe and predictable it turns out to be.

The problems may lie in Todd’s novel, but regardless, characters act illogically, as though written by someone who napped through most of Intro to Psych and skipped English 101 altogether. Character motivations go either unwritten or left on the cutting room floor.

I feel confident that even if I were to be magically transformed into the target demographic, I would still find After to be a cliched, mediocre affair. Come back, "Twilight," all is forgiven.

It’s a serious-minded first-real-love/first sexual experience coming-of-age drama which takes forever to make anything happen, and when it does (the “big reveal”), it’s so lame as to make you weigh your life up to this point, and what inspired you to waste 105 minutes on this drivel.

Beautifully shot in Instagram-filter inspired hues by Tom Betterton and Adam Silver, After is occasionally aesthetically pleasing. Yet the talented cast is burdened by a dead on arrival screenplay that waters down what could have been an intoxicating tale of first love had it divorced itself from its dull formula that no doubt was influenced by committee and the studio’s desire to create what they think teen and tween audiences will enjoy.

The performances are consistently monotone, and the dialogue is alternately treacly, in terms of romantic statements, and on-the-nose, in terms of giving Hardin a back story to explain his rebel act.

One of the more plastic molds of troubled heartthrob storytelling in recent memory...is the kind of dispiriting effort that thinks it’s scratching an itch for masochistic young girls, but primarily suggests that romance, desire and sexuality aren’t worth genuinely exploring.