“Handling the Undead,” directed by Thea Hvistendahl, mainly follows a trio of isolated vignettes. Anna (Renate Reinsve) and her father, Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist), mourn the loss of her young son. Anna’s grief is distant and angry, while her father’s is desperate and emotional. When visiting the boy’s grave, Mahler begins to hear a knocking from within the fresh burial, and unearths his grandson, bringing him back to his daughter’s home. Tora (Bente Børsum) has just lost the love of her life, Elisabet (Olga Damani), but awakens in the night to see that she has returned home. And finally a family, thrust into sudden grief by the death of the mother, Eva (Bahar Pars), who dies on the operating table after an accident, but comes to life in the hospital room shortly after.
Aside from Eva, the causes of the already-dead characters who reanimate over the course of the film are left unknown. It doesn’t matter how they died, since Hvistendahl and co-writer John Ajvide Linqvist’s script is more concerned with the consequences of their homecomings. “Handling the Undead” begs a few impossible questions: is death of the mourning the end of grief? Do the dead themselves grieve? And most poignantly, the film’s disruption of the zombie genre occupies its own niche, asking its characters (and viewers) if the idealized return of your loved ones comes at a brutally realistic cost.
Hvistendahl’s direction is marked by the emotion of longing made tangible. Resonant sound design marked by the visceral sounds of humanity, chewing, coughing, spitting, etc., alongside a swelling score make you hyper aware of the state of being in a body. Lengthy takes and an overall slow pace force the viewers into states of deepened consideration. We are made to sit with moments for longer than comfortable, given time to weigh the possible outcomes and wonder, alongside the characters, how this whole thing works. The dead are here physically, but they don’t speak and hardly move. They become mirrors into the grief of their mourners, objects of projection. “Handling the Undead” forces its viewers to reckon with this plainness of grief’s reality: that on the whole, it has little to do with the dead and everything to do with those left alive.
Meditative and filled with subtlety, the script contains very little consequential dialogue. Conversations simply run adjacent to the film’s real action, which lies in the silent moments of the film’s performers. Words have very little to do with the impact of “Handling the Undead.” Rather, the expressiveness of the actors as they adjust to the uncertainties, strangeness, and overwhelming emotions inherent to their circumstances create the true plot. We learn everything about these relationships from reactions to, and methods of caring for, their undead. It’s an expert plot device that guarantees meta-stories that are individual to each character, imbuing innumerable depth to overall simple tale. “Handling the Undead” is unafraid of discomfort, instead revels in it and shows adoration for the ways in which it makes us learn about ourselves. It feasts on existentialism, making a meal of the human condition and inviting you to toughen up and sit at the table.
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