The beyond-tired Hollywood premise of a boy and girl falling in love, only for the girl to turn into a nightmare as soon as she moves in, probably needs to be killed. That’s why it’s a good thing that director Joe Dante seems to have done exactly that with his new movie, Burying The Ex. It takes the usual cliche and kicks it into the grave and beyond. As the trailer shows, it’s fairly straightforward: Boy meets girl; boy and girl move in; girl turns out to be a terrible person; girl gets hit by a bus and dies; boy meets new, nice girl; then dead girl comes back from the grave, insisting that boy and she are still a couple. Typical love story. Anton Yelchin and Ashley Greene star as the unhappy couple, with Alexandra Daddario showing up halfway through as the one who helps Yelchin move on. It all looks pretty formulaic, but reveling in genre conventions and then pushing them into cartoonish extremes has always been Dante’s strong suit, so we’re withholding judgment for now and trusting the man who gave us everything from Piranha to The ’Burbs. Fingers crossed that this partially crowdfunded film is a return to form—that shot of Greene getting hit by a bus is vintage Dante.
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