The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Handling the Undead (2024)
★★★
(Håndtering av Udøde)
Norway/Sweden/Greece. 2024.
Crew
Director – Thea Hvistendhl, Screenplay – Thea Hvistendhl & John Ajvide Lindqvist, Based on the Novel Handling the Undead (2009) by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Producers – Kristiin Emblem & Guri Neby, Photography – Pål Ulvik Rokseth, Music – Peter Raeburn, Visual Effects Supervisor – Otto Thorbjørnsen, Visual Effects – Haymaker (Supervisor – Helen Theren), Look Look & Stardust Effects (Supervisor – Otto Thorbjørnsen), Special Effects – Fiksern (Supervisor – Christopher Munthe), Makeup Effects Design – Morten Jacobsen, Production Design – Linda Janson. Production Company – Nordisk Film/Zentropa Sweden/Filmiki Athens/Film I Vast/Oslo Filmfond/Norsk Filinstitut/Svenska Filminstituet/Nordisk Film & TV Fond/Greek Film Centre/E.R.T. S.A..
Cast
Bjørn Sundquist (Mahler), Renate Reinsve (Anna), Anders Danielsen Lie (David Zetterberg), Bente Børsum (Tora), Olga Damani (Elisabet), Dennis Østry Ruud (Elias), Inesa Dauksta (Flora), Kian Hansen (Kian), Bahar Pars (Eva Keshavarz)
Plot
The aging Tora buries her long-time companion Elisabet. There is a mysterious power cut across Oslo. Mahler drives out to the grave of his grandson Elias and digs up the body, discovering it to be alive. His daughter Anna is suicidal at the loss of her son but finds new hope in seeing Elias alive again. David Zetterberg goes to the hospital to learn that his wife Eva dead. However, when he visits her body in the morgue she is alive again. Tora meanwhile is startled when Elisabet returns to her. As the authorities try to deal with the dead returning to life everywhere, people find that the resurrected are blank and not quite the same.
Handling the Undead comes from a 2009 novel by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, best known for the novel Let the Right One In (2007), which became the basis of the films Let the Right One In (2008) and Let Me In (2010). Handling the Undead was a feature-length directorial debut for Thea Hvistendhl, who had previously worked in music video, made a couple of short films and the concert documentary The Monkey and the Mouth (2017).
Handling the Undead is a film about the dead resurrected. The film goes to assiduous lengths to divorce itself from any relationship to the Zombie Film. The film’s subdued and measured tone throughout is far removed from any of the quick and easy jumpscares or gore-drenched effects of the standard horror movie – there is even a scene with Inesa Dauksta playing a zombie horror survival videogame to make contrast at one point. The nearest point of comparison might be the French film They Came Back (2004) where society is forced to deal with the return of the dead to life en masse without any explanation.
Renate Reinsve shelters with her resurrected son Dennis Østry Ruud
Thea Hvistendhl’s directorial tone throughout is slow and sombre. The entire film seems to take place in subdued half-shadows where the colour correction levels have been reduced almost to a uniform monochrome. It is very much a slow burn film as we watch the three plot strands – the aging Bente Børsum who buries her lesbian lover and then faces her returned; husband Anders Danielsen Lie dealing with the death of his wife (Bahar Pars) and her reawakening; and Bjørn Sundquist who digs up the body of his grandson. The focus is on the characters and their response to dealing with their loved ones returned but blank and unresponsive.
The cleverness of Handling the Undead is how it makes great efforts to distance itself from the zombie film only to then sneak around when you were not looking and segue into being a zombie film after all. [PLOT SPOILERS] There is a nasty scene – not one that anybody who is an animal lover is going to enjoy watching – where Kian Hansen brings his pet rabbit to visit his mother Bahar Pars at the hospital and she instead refuses to let go. Or just the coolly understated way that Thea Hvistendhl’s camera moves through the house to show Olga Damani sitting in the hallway licking her lips and then moves through to the bedroom to show a rumpled mess, which says all that we need to know what happened to Bente Børsum even though we see no body. The final scenes of the show bring the film’s slow, sombre tone to a perfect close.
