The Sundance Film Festival has been the launching pad for some weird and/or interesting films over the years. A24 and NEON have parlayed these types of movies into success. The latest odd film out of Sundance that was scooped up from NEON is Handling The Undead. It’s a Swedish film reuniting two actors who were a success at the Cannes Film Festival a couple of years ago, Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie from The Worst Person In The World. 

In the summer in Oslo, Norway, three families are dealing with some grief as they have sick or recently deceased relatives. They go through the process of trying to live their lives, but inexplicably, these families’ loved ones come back to life, but they’re still technically dead. In their mind and their eyes. These three families all deal with this incredible occurrence differently. The film shows how was as people deal with something we can’t truly understand.

A lot of families have to deal with barring loved ones or visiting them in the hospital on their deathbed or terminally ill. It’s just part of life. Each of the three families deals with their loved one coming back to them in different ways. One woman cares for her friend, washes her, feeds her, and groomes her as in brushing her hair.  They just had this kind of love for one another in the past. That’s what I gathered from their relationship. Another woman and her father escape the city to the woods where they have a cabin and they care for their little boy like a real little boy. The third family lost their wife and mother very recently and they are very surprised that their mother and wife came back to life right after she died. They are truly confused by this occurrence.  The film leaves the viewer to decide which is the true way if any to deal with this situation. 

The movie uses a visual style that is a bit dark. There are scenes in the daylight, but the film was shot with dark exteriors not very lit. Which gave the movie a darker look than it needed. The shadows were a little bit too much. This was already a dark tale, but the visual style made it even darker. It was hard to see some of the nighttime scenes very well. Maybe this was a conscious decision on the part of the director Thea Hvistendahl. Who knows?

The makeup and hairstyling of the deceased family members and others were a key element of the story. This department had to make these people look very different from the other characters in the film. They had a greenish-grey hue to them that set them apart from the living characters. Some had cuts and bruises which set them apart from the other deceased characters as well. They were all individually different just like real humans are. The makeup and hairstyling added a good element to help set a dark mood for the movie.

The cast is okay in this movie, but they don’t do a great job. Reinsve and Danielsen Lie are both fine, but they don’t go to the next level I wanted them to go to considering what is going on in their lives. The entire cast seemed like they were just mostly going through their paces. They all could have been better. Once again this seemed like the direction of them could have been better. Reinsve showed a lot of promise in The Worst Person In The World, but she didn’t do much for me here. That’s sad because I was very interested to see what she had up her sleeve next.

Handling the Undead is unlike any other horror-centric film of its kind. It’s a slow burn that lets the audience watching figure out on their own what’s truly going on. Also why it’s going and what caused it. Which isn’t explained that well. The cast is okay in their various roles, but I feel they could have given better performances in the hands of a different director. The cinematography which wasn’t that good and the makeup and hairstyling were two things that were keys to telling this story better. They weren’t necessarily great.  I was looking forward to seeing a different take on the Undead, but instead, I got a slow-paced story about reflection on deceased family members. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. It’s just a misstep where it could have been good, but it’s not.

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen