The dead are returning in the chilly Norwegian drama Handling the Undead, a sad, somber attempt to guide the zombie genre from midnight movie to arthouse. It works in parts, as a study of the ache and irrationality of grief, asking its characters how much they’re willing to accept and deny in order to see their loved ones again. But the first-time director Thea Hvistendahl’s patience-insisting slow burn can be testing, like watching a block of ice slowly melt, a story told in the smallest of drips, some of which sink in deeper than others.
On a summer’s day in Oslo, three different dynamics are upended by this confounding re-emergence. A single mother (The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve) is stopped from a suicide attempt by her father (Bjørn Sundquist), who has brought with him her once-dead son, suddenly alive. An elderly woman (Bente Børsum) attends the funeral of her partner (Olga Damani) only to find her back at their home that night. And the death of a mother (Bahar Pars) rocks the life of her family only for her husband (Reinsve’s Worst Person co-star Anders Danielsen Lie) to find her breathing once again.
Based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, whose debut novel Let the Right One In and its multiple adaptations handle similarly subdued, if more plot-heavy, genre ground, Handling the Undead operates most effectively as a haunting “what if?”. The return of the dead is briefly referenced as a wider epidemic but Hvistendahl’s narrow focus is less interested in how the world is responding and more in individual people. Grief is a strange, selfish thing that can warp and destroy you, and your desperation for it to go away or at least be somewhat tempered can take you to dark, illogical places.
The zombies in the film – the word is never used but the story is set in a universe in which zombies are part of pop culture, something we briefly see in a video game – are not particularly animated; they exist for the most part as breathing corpses with eyes open. Their loved ones are then forced to ask themselves how much is enough? What is it that they are truly grieving? And is this hollow, unresponsive version of the person they miss going to make them feel better or worse? The script, a collaboration between Hvistendahl and Lindqvist, keeps these questions unsaid, worked through in the eyes of the characters, an effectively muted showcase for a well-measured Reinsve, doing double-duty at Sundance with this and the grating psychodrama A Different Man. Her story makes an impression, along with that of the queer older couple, although plotting of the third family is a little scattershot, with too many characters not afforded enough of a look-in.
The lugubrious pace can be a little too sluggish at times but Hvistendahl handles the last act’s descent into slightly more expected horror well, still focusing on the emotional impact, prioritising character over chaos (a horrifying scene of animal cruelty is unbearable to watch for obvious visceral reasons but the response of those watching is what really hurts). The final, crushing endnotes of Handling the Undead are nothing we didn’t expect but they’re haunting more because of the pain that we don’t see, the pain that may never go away, no matter how hard we try.
Handling the Undead is showing at the Sundance film festival and will be released later this year
