by Grant Koo for the Autumn 2025 issue
[Jersey City] – [Wednesday, Nov 19, 2025] – I first met Kevin B. Lee—whose debut film Afterlives is touring the world as I type this, elevating film festivals in Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Milan, and I’m happy to announce, perhaps prematurely and definitely without any sort of official authorization, will eventually grace us here in NYC sometime in Spring 2026 [1]—my freshman year in college. Him and another future life-long friend [2] were seated behind a bare folding table outside the busy mailroom in what was then still called Baxter Hall, looking for other Asian-American-looking types to recruit for their ambitious theater project, which they had named rather dryly, and I got the impression just on the spot, the Asian-American Theater Project, when they picked me out pretty easily I’d bet in that crowd, and waved me over so enthusiastically that I immediately became suspicious of them both. I seem to recall them having to borrow the pen & paper I’d used to write down my name and first-ever email address (you guys!) from one of the (not to get all judgy) nicer student org recruitment tables, lovingly spruced up with colorful tablecloths and humorous placards, set up on either side of theirs, and which they seemed to be trying to block my view of.
Kevin went on to write a piece for me to perform, parodying the Christopher Walken monologue from Pulp Fiction, which had just come out that year. Basically, it involved me passing along a family heirloom, a ticklish feather that my character had shoved waaaay up where the sun don’t shine and successfully smuggled out of mainland China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution to finally make good on a promise made to a long dead friend to deliver the aforementioned family heirloom into the hands of his son, who may have still been a fetus at the time when the promise, not the feather, was first extracted.
It was a funny piece really, and I just felt so awful about continually flubbing lines and what not during rehearsals that as opening night loomed near, I ended up just telling him that I’d understand completely if he wanted someone else to take the role, e.g. that guy who never returned after freshman year to pursue an acting career presumably because the ATP transformed him (we all felt kinda bad for his parents—I think he’d already declared pre-med—and more than a little responsible for being bad influences in countless ways at the time, but I’m very pleased to report that I’ve since seen him in a bunch of wonderful roles spanning film & television). [3]
But good ol’ K Dogg thought I could pull it off, insisting he’d written it specifically with me in mind, which kind of sealed the deal in my own, so I doubled down putting in the time, mostly so as to not disappoint his irrational faith in my acting abilities. Anyway, please excuse me for tooting my own horn here when I say that come opening night, his confidence in me hit the jackpot, and I effing nailed it! I feel it only right to also recognize that this was largely thanks to the grueling grooming campaign and generous rehearsal notes from our fearless director. [4]
But let’s all just take a moment here to reset as things seem to have gone a little off the rails.
—..—
I’ve re-watched Afterlives multiple times for the purposes of this article, and I shit you not, it just kept getting better and better with each subsequent viewing—richer, more profound, deepening my understanding of how violence replicates from an act committed in a particular time & place to an image captured and widely disseminated with openly nefarious intent, and how that image ultimately infects its hosts, particularly artists like himself that have perhaps unwittingly, and/or naive to the lasting aftereffects, voluntarily exposed themselves to the material violence that the film takes as its subject.
The film asks, What happens when we dissect horrific extremist propaganda soaked in murder & mayhem with the gleaming surgical tools of critical film theory? And shouldn’t it be possible, at least in theory, to reverse engineer a kind of antidote that resists such malicious infections from images of violence? One question leads to the next as the film’s very approach to filmmaking itself evolves, and we discover alongside the filmmaker how heavily invested he’s become in discovering an answer to the question: how are artists affected psychologically and emotionally by metabolizing such depictions of violence through their work, sitting in front of the screen day in and day out, with all the separation and loneliness that must entail because who are you going to talk to about your day if you spent it breaking down ISIS videos into their component parts—and where does that kind of voluntary exposure to violence ultimately leave you standing vis-à-vis the actual victims of said violence?
Kevin’s deeply personal and humanistic approach handles such questions with great art, intelligence, and sensitivity. If you’ve ever watched any of his other desktop documentaries, you’ll appreciate how well-suited the form is to the voice & imagery in this impressive debut—the film possesses this strange frictionless quality, like you’re moving through the material while at the same time seeing how it’s being made, stored, edited, and represented, everything, everywhere, all at once—and what’s really beautiful is seeing why this rather beautiful form had to be abandoned or evolve in the end.
I’d like to end this review on a reassuring note that I wouldn’t count as a spoiler. I’d been unnecessarily anxious the first time I watched the film because I didn’t want to see a beheading ever, [5] especially not right before bed, which is when I watched the film the first time. It detracted & distracted, so rest assured, dear readers, that none are actually shown in Afterlives. What viewers are offered instead remains quite powerful and emblematic. In a close up shot of himself reviewing footage released by ISIS of a beheading, I found myself paying as close attention to Kevin’s face as he must’ve been to the beheading playing on a screen somewhere off screen, which quite frankly was horrific enough for me. 🏁
Footnotes: [1] As a quick aside, I’ll be hosting my own public screening of Afterlives in a new space opening early 2026, but more on that later in a section of The JZJ that doesn’t purport to cover Arts & Entertainment. [2] ‘Sup Paul, thanks again for becoming a founding member! [3] Yo Shindig, loved you as Pastor Kim in Beef! [4] Hiya Vicky, see you got some new books coming out for me to add to the children’s section of my library! [5] Also, my daughter was still up studying in the next room, and I didn’t want her walking in on me watching ISIS videos; she recently walked in on me during a rather unnecessarily graphic scene IMHO from Anora, but more on that never.
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