HANDLING THE UNDEAD - Mark Reviews Movies

Handling the Undead, Neon

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 30, 2024

If the dead inexplicably came back to life, the situation might unfold as it does in Handling the Undead—at first, at least. That's the unique thing about co-writer/director Thea Hvistendahl's narrative feature debut, which plays entirely like the usually unseen first act of any zombie story. Before the undead become violent and start attacking the living, they would probably need a bit of time to adjust to being alive, if only barely, again, and the living would definitely need to deal with the fact that their loved ones are somehow alive, if not quite as they previously were, again.

The film, an adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel (with the author co-writing the screenplay), is less about zombies and more about the survivors, who have to live, not only with re-animated corpses of relatives and spouses, but also with an unthinkable kind of dual grief. They already lost a child and grandchild, in one case, or a wife/partner, in two other threads, and mother, in one of those others.

Now, the sudden terror, confusion, and relief of once again seeing a loved one in the flesh gradually transforms into a horrifying realization. These resurrected people may technically be alive, in that they're breathing and their hearts are beating and they're moving, but whatever form of life this is here isn't the same as before. How does one process something so awful, and for that matter, how can a person even live with something so unthinkable?

Such are the state of these characters and the mood of this film, which exist in a quiet kind of emotional desperation and a persistent brand of intellectual denial. We don't usually consider this step in a typical zombie narrative, because most of them cut to the chase—sometimes literally, in that masses of the undead are often stalking and hunting for living upon whom to feed. Hvistendahl and Lindqvist, though, only consider this initial stage of what eventually reveals itself to be the beginning of a traditional sort of zombie apocalypse. We've seen that outcome before countless times, so it doesn't matter in this story.

Instead, this one focuses on three separate families who have recently experienced the devastating loss of a loved one. In theory, there are many, many more people going through the same experience as or a similar process to the ones we see, considering news reports about crisis centers being established and officials searching a local cemetery for cases of the dead coming back to life. The scope of this film, though, is limited in a way that allows us to feel the confusion and mounting horror of such a scenario on an intimate level.

Admirably, little about the cause of the re-animated corpses is explained. What we know here is that the city of Oslo looks mostly abandoned, perhaps because of a pandemic—since the shots of the stillness of the city, with empty streets and sidewalks and entire buildings, look eerily familiar to similar images a few years ago. The silence is overwhelming, and despite the sounds of sirens and helicopters later, the quiet remains in the homes where these three vignettes take place.

We meet Anna (Renate Reinsve) and her father Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist). Her son, the father's grandson, Elias has died recently. Anna is barely coping, not sleeping much, hardly speaking or eating when her father visits with food, and going through the motions of working at her job. Mahler heads to his grandson's grave, where the dirt is still a mound from being freshly replaced, with a shovel.

We also meet David (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Eva (Bahar Pars), who have a regular life with two teenage children, Flora (Insea Dauksta) and Kian (Kian Hansen). They're preparing for the younger kid's birthday the next day when David receives a call from the hospital. His wife was in a car accident and died in surgery. He sits next to her corpse in a hospital room, mourning and trying to figure out what he's supposed to do next.

Finally, there's Tora (Bente Børsum), the only person attending the funeral service for her longtime partner at the cemetery's chapel. Returning to the apartment they shared, the older Tora has nothing to do but grieve alone.

The only sliver of an explanation for the resurrection phenomenon is a power surge. That's all that is necessary here, as Mahler hears noise from inside his grandson's coffin, David spots his wife start to breathe again, and Tora is unexpectedly reunited with her partner Elisabet (Olga Damani).

The rest of the divided story simply observes as the three families try to return to some kind normalcy, without understanding or even considering the repercussions of what this supernatural event could mean. It doesn't matter. Anna tries to care for her son, brought to life by way of a doll with animatronic features, which gives the undead character an unsettling facsimile of life. Tora tries to re-create the domestic bliss she and Elisabet had, and David and his kids try to go on as if nothing is wrong, since nothing is for all they know. Eva is technically alive, but the hospital is keeping her quarantine for the time being.

Until the third act (when the horror elements emerge, including a genuinely upsetting scene involving Kian's birthday gift), the film is entirely about its cryptic atmosphere and the contradictory emotional state of these characters. Handling the Undead treats this well-worn subject of horror stories with a level of sincerity and severity that's novel and refreshing. It's a human drama about loss and grief first, where the existence of zombies is both a factor protracting those emotions and, when it comes to the stuff of usual horror fare, an afterthought.

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