Zombies don\u2019t have to be fast. It\u2019s a fun novelty sometimes, sure. But the essence of zombies as a horror subgenre is best expressed as a feeling of creeping dread, the idea that something horrible is coming and there\u2019s nothing you can do to stop it. Executed properly, the slowness can actually enhance the terror, letting it sink into the viewer\u2019s bones over long, breathless seconds. In this specific aspect, \u201cHandling the Undead\u201d is a great zombie film.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The official synopsis for Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl\u2019s feature debut describes it as a \u201cdrama with horror elements,\u201d which is accurate; even when the movie indulges in classic horror scenarios\u2014an isolated cabin, a woman skinny-dipping in a lake\u2014it does so in its own restrained, mournful way. Built around three interwoven storylines, the film comprises a series of hushed tableaus that are tastefully composed and elegantly shot. There\u2019s very little dialogue, and everything is bathed in an overcast gray light.<\/p>\n
The understated filmmaking fits the intriguing premise: What would realistically happen if the dead started coming back to life? \u201cHandling the Undead\u201d is based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, whose \u201cLet the Right One In\u201d and \u201cBorder\u201d take a similarly grounded approach to their supernatural elements. The reactions of the characters to the freak electromagnetic event\u2014portrayed here as a power surge that fills radio waves with static and interrupts the fight patterns of migrating birds\u2014that returns their recently deceased loved ones to them are realistic as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is to say that they\u2019re sad, desperate, and irrational. When Mahler (Bj\u00f8rn Sundquist) hears his dead grandson banging on the lid of his coffin, he doesn\u2019t scream. He fetches a shovel and digs the boy up. When Elisabet (Olga Damani) gets out of her<\/em> casket and wanders home to her partner Tora (Bente B\u00f8rsum), Tora is shocked but happy to see her. And David (Anders Danielsen Lie) is confused when a doctor tells him that his girlfriend Eva (Bahar Pars) was dead, but now she isn\u2019t. But he chooses to latch onto the hopeful part of the doctor\u2019s statement, not the disturbing one.<\/p>\n Add \u201cThe Worst Person in the World\u201d star Renate Reinsve as the despondent mother of the undead boy, and you\u2019ve got a symphony of frozen grief and false hope playing out over 97 somber minutes. As an audience, we know that the characters\u2019 optimism is doomed. We\u2019ve seen one of these movies before. That lends a heartbreaking sadness to scenes where characters embrace their dead loved ones, whose appearances range from slightly \u201coff\u201d (Elisabet\u2019s back is purple, from her blood pooling as she laid in her coffin) to full-on zombie makeup in the style of a George Romero film.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Zombies don\u2019t have to be fast. It\u2019s a fun novelty sometimes, sure. But the essence of zombies as a horror subgenre is best expressed as a feeling of creeping dread, the idea that something horrible is coming and there\u2019s nothing you can do to stop it. Executed properly, the slowness can actually enhance the terror, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[45,48,47],"class_list":["post-1273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-movies","tag-drama","tag-horror","tag-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}