by Anthony Mullins
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Renate Reinsve, Bjørn Sundquist, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bente Børsum
Intro:
While it might lack the jump scares and body count of a typical zombie film, Handling the Undead has a beating heart that delivers a surprisingly tender story …
Most zombie films sit somewhere on a spectrum between “gory and grim” (e.g., World War Z, 28 Days Later) and “gory and hilarious” (e.g., Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead). In between, there are varying degrees of social commentary, playful meta-gags and just plain fun.
However, what is surprisingly rare in these films are genuine reflections on death, grief and loss — ideas you would assume would be upfront, given all the corpses. Body count wins over bummer “feelings” every time.
But, as acclaimed TV shows Les Revenant and The Last of Us have demonstrated, there are riches to be found in “digging up” this sort of emotion.
Adapted from the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the celebrated writer of Let the Right One In and Border, Handling the Undead is a rare zombie film that goes where others fear to tread.
Set in Oslo, on the hottest day of the year, a strange, and ultimately unexplained, occurrence sees the recently deceased rise from the dead.
Other films would concentrate on the social panic or the cause of the phenomena or just killing the pesky zombies. But instead, director Thea Hvistendahl concentrates on a small ensemble of characters who are faced with an unfathomable dilemma, as their loved ones return in a semi-decomposed state.
They are Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist) and Anna (Renate Reinsve from The Worst Person in the World), a grieving grandfather and his daughter, who has recently lost her son; David (Anders Danielsen Lie, also from Worst Person, but also the lead in French zombie flick The Night Eats the World), a now single father of two, who has lost his beloved wife in a car accident; and Tora (Bente Børsum) who is struggling to cope with the loss of her lifelong partner, Elisabet.
Their stories are restrained and remain focused on the efforts of these poor souls to reconnect with their decayed loved ones, a task made all the more difficult because the risen cannot speak, barely move, and scarcely seem to notice they are alive at all.
The performances are uniformly strong, particularly from Reinsve as Anna, making this an unusually character-driven film in a genre that prefers a high kill count.
While the storytelling may be too minimalist and its pacing too gentle for many audiences, it is hard to deny the quietly tense atmosphere that Hvistendahl creates and sustains with the help of the beautiful natural light cinematography of Pål Ulvik Rokseth and the disquieting music of composer Peter Raeburn. Indeed, when violence finally does surface, particularly in a memorable scene involving a family pet, it is all the more disturbing because of the film’s disciplined pace.
While it might lack the jump scares and body count of a typical zombie film, Handling the Undead has a beating heart that delivers a surprisingly tender story that will no doubt haunt the right audience.
