Jeff Baena, Film Director and Husband of Aubrey Plaza, Dies at 47

Jeff Baena, the director and screenwriter who co-wrote the dark comedy “I Heart Huckabees,” and who directed films including “Life After Beth” and “Horse Girl,” died on Friday at a residence in Los Angeles. He was 47.

His death was confirmed by a press representative, who did not cite a cause.

Mr. Baena often elevated dark thematic elements with humor in his works. There were zombies and romance in “Life After Beth” (2014), and improper nuns in “The Little Hours” (2017).

He was married to the actress Aubrey Plaza, who played the titular character in “Life After Beth,” about a woman who comes back from the dead after a fatal snake bite, and acted in “The Little Hours,” and “Spin Me Round” (2022), which Mr. Baena directed and co-wrote with the actress Alison Brie.

Mr. Baena also co-wrote the 2004 film “I Heart Huckabees,” a dark comedy that stars Dustin Hoffman, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin and Mark Wahlberg. The film, about an environmentalist who hires “existential detectives,” was not a box office success but developed a cult following for its quirky plotlines and characters.

“My parents were divorced, so I’m sure the trauma of divorce helped inform my sense of humor,” Mr. Baena said in an interview on Fresh Fiction, a YouTube channel, in 2022. “Most comedy probably comes from drama.”

He decided to become a filmmaker at 11 years old, he told Fresh Fiction, when he was flipping through cable television channels and tuned into Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” He was so intrigued by the film that he asked his father to take him to a video rental store, where they rented the 1963 Federico Fellini film “8 ½.”