Since U been cured
Cancer movies are typically a tug of war: On one side, the pessimism — the arbitrary cruelness of a cancer diagnosis, the ravages it leaves on the body, the emotional wringer it puts loved ones through. But there’s always a silver lining. On the other side, the hope — the chance to live every day like you’re dying because you quite literally are. The best cancer movies let these two sides play in conversation with each other end with a richer appreciation of the full spectrum of life’s experiences, whether or not a bucket is kicked.
After Eveything (not to be confused with the 2023 film that was the fifth in the After series eviscerated by Brennan Klein on Alternate Ending) is not quite “the best cancer movie” though it’s certainly a good one; a bit less grueling than average for the topic, but not without the usual totems: scary statistics cited and pale makeup and shouting about the unfairness of it all. Yet its entire second half is not about either side of the pessimism-hope gradient, but a third force: The messy ambivalence and emotional hangover that comes with remission. When you live every day like it’s your last, what does it mean when the days aren’t quite so final anymore?
The unlucky victim in After Everything is Elliott (Jeremy Allen White), a slacker twenty-something living in New York. He works at a sandwich shop, smokes a lot of pot, plays a lot of video games, and hooks up at bars on weekends. After one such intimate escapade, he finds his groin region in intense pain. Assuming he has caught an STD, he goes to a doctor’s office, where he learns he has Ewing sarcoma, a bone cancer usually found in children.
At the time he makes this discovery, he’d been in the midst of trying to make ins with Mia (Maika Monroe), a regular at his sandwich shop. She’s aimless in her own way — in a social rut while toiling at a crappy low-level corporate job. On their first date, he spills the news of his diagnosis to her, not because their bond is special, but because it isn’t: He finds it easier to confide in a stranger than the people closest to him.
With his confession, Elliott inadvertently binds himself to Mia: The pair grow closer and eventually fall in love. They’re an odd fit who never would have made it in normal circumstances — the only thing they really share is a desire for Elliott to survive. But they also bring out some compelling traits in the other, and both manage to escape their rut with the help of the other.
This is all captured wonderfully by White and Monroe. I kept changing my mind on who was better, and ultimately landed on Monroe because there’s just not as much to her character in the screenplay, yet she always makes Mia into a multi-dimensional person, a little bit sad but always covering it with composure. White, meanwhile, has since become a breakout star in The Iron Claw and the TV show The Bear. Here he is great at keeping some edge to Elliott without sacrificing his likeability and sensitivity. And, yeah, he does the sad cancer stuff really well. The supporting cast is strong too, with small turns by Marisa Tomei and Gina Gershon raising the star power.
Elliott’s make-or-break surgery, with daunting odds, comes at about the halfway mark, so it’s not really a surprise that he pulls through, which brings with it the promise of the premise: a look at the emotional toll of remission. Neither Elliott nor Mia seems to really have believed he would survive, and so they made some rash in-the-moment decisions that they reckon with in the ensuing year. Elliott begins reverting to his previous slacker self, which accompanies an atrophy in a relationship that was built, from the start, on Elliott’s sickness.
It’s honestly tougher to watch the second half of this film than the first half, which is clearly the point: We think about cancer in terms of life and death, of tumors and chemotherapy. But it’s a sickness that goes beyond the body, a specter of complicated life changes and, of course, the lingering anxiety that it might return even when it disappears. Watching Elliott and Mia’s relationship slowly fracture is a depressing gauntlet to sit through: The audience as much as the characters really wonder if these two people really are destined to make it.
Given the tone of the movie leading up to it, I wasn’t surprised to find some ambivalence and ambiguity in the ending, though I admit it’s even darker than I was expecting. This is not a feel-good film, and that’s more a testament to the pessimistic human drama than the emotional manipulation of the cancer storyline.
After Everything is co-directed and co-written by Hannah Marks and Joey Powers — the former a rising indie actor whose career has since pivoted to filmmaking. They do a good job keeping the film even-keeled and naturalistic, with a really great control of tone. They also make some great use of ellipsis — certain key moments appear off-screen, and time jumps require us to find our bearings on the changes between Elliott and Mia in between.
I can’t lie; I felt a little bit deflated when the film wrapped. While the overall arc works very well, I kept wanting more individual scenes to really remember. But it is overall a satisfying and well-made film, a strong version of itself, and a very promising debut for Hannah Marks’ directorial career.
Is It Good?
Good (5/8)
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