Jeff Baena, the director and screenwriter who co-wrote the dark comedy “I Heart Huckabees” and directed such films as “Life After Beth” and “Horse Girl,” died Friday. He was 47.

His death was confirmed by a press official who did not give a cause.

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

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

Mr. Baena also co-wrote the 2004 film “I Heart Huckabees,” a dark comedy starring 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 bizarre storylines and characters.

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

He decided to become a filmmaker at age 11, he told Fresh Fiction, while flipping through cable TV channels and listening to Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” He was so fascinated by the film that he asked his father to take him to a video rental store where they could rent the 1963 Federico Fellini film “8 ½.”

“I’ve always been drawn to crazy movies,” he said on Fresh Fiction. He said he was “exposed to a lot of things that I think were a little off center, and that was normal for me,” adding, “I was looking for it.”

Jeffrey Baena was born on June 29, 1977 and grew up in Miami. According to The New Yorker, he graduated from New York University in 1999, where he majored in film and minored in medieval and renaissance studies.

He later co-wrote “I Heart Huckabees” with director David O. Russell. The film “captures the desperation of the liberal left with astonishingly good humor,” wrote critic Manohla Dargis in her 2004 review of the film for The New York Times.

Ms. Dargis added that it is a “comedy of dialectics in which opposing dualities compete like wounded lovers, but it is completely sincere.”

A full list of Mr. Baena’s survivors was not immediately available. His wife, Ms. Plaza, became known for her role as April Ludgate on the television series “Parks and Recreation,” in which she played a moody, sardonic and reluctant police officer. She recently starred in films such as “Megalopolis” (2024) and “Emily the Criminal” (2022).

In addition to directing and writing “Life After Beth” and “The Little Hours,” Mr. Baena also wrote and directed the films “Joshy” (2016) and “Horse Girl” (2020), which he co-wrote with Ms. Brie.

Jack Begg contributed to the research.