After We Collided Parent Guide

Having endured all 105 excruciating minutes of After, I was not enthused about watching a sequel. I expected flat acting, clunky dialogue, and thin filaments of plot designed to string together breathy sexual episodes.

Little did I know that this was a best case scenario. The sequel is much, much worse.

It’s hard to overstate how bad the acting is in the movie. Whoever suggested that Hero Fiennes Tiffin could act did both Mr. Tiffin and movie audiences a disservice. Tiffin broods and attempts to smolder but all he projects is a petulant sense of entitlement and a creepy serial killer vibe. (If he really wants to kick start his career maybe he should consider horror movies.) Josephine Langford retains some of the brightness she carried in After, but even she can’t bring authenticity to this cliché-ridden, tedious script.

In fairness, it’s hard to write a good script based on a weak story. This one starts a month after the first film as Hardin (Tiffin) nurses his broken heart after being rightly rejected by Tessa (Langford) for his deception. Tessa is starting one of those glamorous jobs that you only find in the movies. While most of us in the real world spent our college summers flipping burgers, painting houses, or working retail, Tessa is interning at a publishing house where she’s getting paid to review five novel submissions a week. On her second day at work, the 19 year old is taken to a conference and her employer buys her glitzy clothes – all without any expectation of sexual favors. (Only in Hollywood, right?) What Tessa doesn’t know is that Hardin used to have the same job, and he’s going to come back into her life.

Not surprisingly, Hardin’s reappearance in Tessa’s life isn’t platonic. The first time they see each other again, they have unprotected sex – while Tessa is drunk. This is just the beginning of frequent sex scenes, which come with lots of soft focus camera work plus an abundance of moaning, panting, and thrusting. There is no breast or genital nudity, but there are multiple scenes of lovers sliding their hands under clothes and undressing each other. If After was a foreplay film, After We Collided is a consummation movie, all about anticipation, arousal and climaxes – one of which coincides neatly with the ringing in of the new year. (Nope, I’m not making that up.)

If the non-stop sexual content isn’t enough of a deterrent, profanity and alcohol abuse make the movie even less appealing for teen viewers. Worse still are the toxic messages for young women that sexual chemistry is enough to make it worthwhile staying in a relationship with a man who has a drinking problem and a volatile temper. Encouraging girls to stay in relationships because they “help” their troubled partners is terrible advice, too often leading to heartbreak and possibly harm. If this isn’t scary enough, the movie sequel baits at the end, meaning that there will be more of this saga – unless moviegoers refuse to spend money on this instalment. Now, that would be a happily ever after ending…