REVIEW: Victoria Justice and Midori Francis are the Perfect Team in Netflix’s Afterlife of the Party

Have you ever wondered how your loved ones would react to your death? How would they move on, especially if you left things on bad terms? If you had the chance to go back and fix your mistakes, what would be your first step? Netflxi’s new movie, Afterlife of the Party, takes all those questions and places a comedic and charming spin on them.

Afterlife of the Party follows party-girl, Cassie (Victoria Justice), who after a night out to celebrate her birthday, finds herself waking up in the afterlife. In order to determine whether or not she will go to heaven or hell, Cassie must fix the relationships she left open-ended on Earth before her time runs out. With the help of her afterlife guardian, Val (Robyn Scott) Cassie heads back to Earth to begin the hard work of reconnecting with her loved ones, in hopes of getting to the big VIP room in the sky.

Directed by Stephen Herek, Afterlife of the Party is a fun, cute film that plays to its biggest strength, the friendship between Cassie and her BFF, Lisa (Midori Francis). The focus on these two’s relationship is what will captivate the audience and continuously keep them charmed from start to finish. It definitely helps that Justice and Francis have the most adorable relationship and manage to bring out the best in one another’s acting. The two definitely feel like they have known one another for years. What could have been a focus on Lisa’s love life or Cassie’s , the audience instead watches as not only the girls’ relationship grow stronger, but as they also grow as individuals. Both actresses were asked to step out of their comfort zones in the most comedic ways, but nothing ever felt forced or unrealistic

However, because of this focus on the friendship, Cassie’s other two relationships, her relationship with mom and her relationship with her dad, get dropped. So much of the film is focused on Cassie and Lisa, that when the time comes for Cassie to focus on helping her dad or reconnecting with her mom, it is short lived. These moments do intertwine well with Cassie and Lisa’s journey, but it would have been nice to have seen Cassie spend more time with her parents and trying to find more ways to connect with them.

Justice and Francis are both wonderful in this film. They have wonderful comedic timing and bounce so well of one another. Robyn Scott, who steps in as Cassie’s guardian Val, is one of the brightest spots about this film. She is quite lovely and brings some of the best moments in the film.

Afterlife of the Party is the type of film you will want to turn on when you are looking for something heartwarming to cheer up a rainy day. There’s nothing complicated about it and it doesn’t require a lot of thinking. It’s a perfect way to spend a day with friends or by yourself.

Grade: B