If zombies were not so obsessed with eating our brains, I think they would be nice to conserve they are the strange half-dead breathing facsimiles of those we inhabited in life who were there to be looked at, to be touched, to be spoken to, but who weren’t really there and who hadn’t quite either. This question is, to some extent, posed by the title in question Handling the Undead It is the threat of death which gives this gentle and sometimes heart-wrenching and complicated grieving process drama a cool and terrifyingly killing activity. Thea Hvistendahl‘s impressively restrained debut feature may maintain its genre expectations up to the last act, but it never feels convincing or a betrayal: It’s a thinking and feeling, and most laughably bloody, living-dead horror.
After being screened at the World Dramatic competition in Sundance, the U.S. distributor, Neon, might face some challenges with the marketing of the film due to its horror elements. However, the US audience might be looking forward to the cast of Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie from The Worst Person in the World. While the horror aspects of the movie as well as being entangled in a loosely developed group will not appeal to the midnight film viewers, the movie is surprisingly more unnerving than it is supposed to be frightening, satisfying the arthouse fans. “Handling the Undead” is filled with haunting imagery that would rather make you feel bone-chilling without the gruesome aspects that many zombie films tend to. These contradictions not only serve as a part of the movie but give it a completely different feel.
A peek at the attitude over here is that “Handling the Undead” is based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist who is the author of Let the Right One In and was co-written by Hvistendahl and the author himself. Just like the movie from 2008, this too has a sense of sadness but it greatly departs from the typical storytelling method which is common in this genre. What follows resembles the first fie salvo of somebody who is trying to learn something, considering its difficulty and in this instance, the context is od lacking primary importance a group of people located most probably by some lake somewhere in Norway and all of them in one way or another have that air of destruction around them. To say it in simple words the weather was warm and the shrouding mist added to the element of destruction. Everything was drenched in khaki shades with a light fog, camera settings by Pal Ulvik Rokseth ensured that warmth was never brought in during every shot.
Seventy-year-old Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist) lost his son Elias not too long ago and as time moves on it appears as if he loses the will to live too. Mahler’s adult daughter Anna doesn’t go beyond evading glaring into his eyes and seeing his frail and battered form- thus adding to his stifling life in Mehjoor Nagar of Kashmir. Tora (Bente Børsum) resembles a statue being pushed to see a trolley wheeling away a coffin from the audacious funeral she attended of her life partner. Daniel Mosen’s aspiring standup household fails to offer him shelter from narcissism as David Danielsen, Eva, and Bahar Pars deviate his attention for a short time. His life couldn’t be better: he is performing, touring, and starring in commercials. However, following a car accident, where Eva was put on life support, devoured Daniel Mosen’s world with chirping birds and flickering lights mixing with car alarms wanting to end lives instead of saving them.
Physicians are surprised when Eva’s heart reanimates, but there is no life behind her eyes. Mahler digs up the decaying yellow body of his grandson, who is barely alive and can take shallow wheezy breaths from time to time. And neither in tone nor in movements does Tora try to hide her bewilderment as she discovers Elisabet seated, around the house they once occupied, and allowing her to brush her hair or whenever they share the bed, she does not seem to respond vocally or emotionally. No one is particularly keen to probe into this wondrous phenomenon nor to ask too many questions about it for fear that the alteration, though exceptional and not ideal, will be undone just as rapidly. But self-nurtured creatures which appear to be rather lifeless have their limits. Even as these mindless forms are being fed and cared for in the hopes of nurturing them to a semblance of ‘life,’ the universal feeling of anguish remains.
The performers resolutely dismiss their performances in “Handling the Undead” as oven-set surrealism, but it expects their performers’ deep and good understanding of both the story and goal of the movie. Besides, it is proper to expect throughout the sequence, the sagging carpet, sets constructed by Linda Janson, and the haunting notes of Peter Raeburn’s score which inviably fits the film backward. In what she described as long JuJu which is stern-looking Hvistendahl produced her first real-feature film. It is noticeable that the sorrow of the film possesses both subtle and vivid qualities and constantly changes in relation to human and reality relationships. Even the living dead have their ups and downs.
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