TThe dead return in the chilly Norwegian drama Handling the Undead. The show is a sad and dark attempt to take the zombie genre from midnight movies to arthouses. The film functions in part as a study in the pain and absurdity of grief, asking its characters how much to accept and how much to deny in order to see their loved ones again. But first-time director Thea Vistendaal's patient slow burn can be an ordeal, like watching a block of ice slowly melt, the story told in the smallest drop, Some of the drops sink deeper than other drops.
On a summer day in Oslo, this perplexing recurrence of events upends three different dynamics. A single mother (The Worst Person in the World's Renate Reinsve) is stopped from attempting suicide by her father (Bjorn Sundquist), who brings her once-dead son, but suddenly comes back to life. The older woman (Bente Borsum) attended the funeral of her partner (Olga Damani), but she had returned to her home that night. And while the death of her mother (Bahar Pars) shakes up her family's life, her husband (Reinsve's The Worst Person co-star Anders Danielsen-Lee) brings her back to life.
Handling the Undead, based on the book by John Ivide Lindqvist, is part of the debut novel Let the Right One In In and its multiple adaptations, a similarly subdued, more plot-heavy genre. “Handling the Undead'' works most effectively as an unforgettable “what if'' story. Although the return of the dead is briefly mentioned as part of a broader epidemic, Hvistendahl's focus is on individuals rather than how the world is responding. Grief is a strange and selfish thing that can warp and destroy you, and your desperation for it to go away, or at least be alleviated somewhat, can take you to dark and illogical places. Might go.
The zombies in this movie (the word is never used, but the story is set in a world where zombies are part of pop culture and look like something you've seen briefly in a video game) are especially animated. Not that there is. They most often exist as breathing corpses with open eyes. Loved ones are forced to ask themselves how much is enough? What are they really sad about? And will this empty, unresponsive, lonely person make them feel better or worse? The screenplay, a collaboration between Hvistendahl and Lindqvist, does not address these questions, but is developed through the eyes of the characters, effectively understated, and with a well-calculated line-sweeping that gives it a strong contrast to the film. He played a dual role in the psychological drama A Different Man at Sundance. . Her story, along with that of an older queer couple, is memorable, but the plot of the third family is a bit scattershot, with too many characters to explore enough.
Although the tedious pacing can be a bit too slow at times, Hvistendahl manages to focus on emotional impact, prioritizing character over chaos, and navigates the final act's somewhat expected descent into horror well. I'm processing (horrible scenes of animal abuse are unbearable to watch for obvious visceral reasons, but what really hurts is the reaction of the viewer). The shocking ending note at the end of Handling the Undead isn't something we were expecting, but it's also a reminder of the pain we can't see, the pain that never goes away no matter how hard we try. The pain is even more haunting.
