Sundance 2024 Film Festival – Handling the Undead is a zombie film that isn’t concerned with apocalyptic horror. The feature debut of Thea Hvistendahl and based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), the film has no drawn-out action sequences and very little gore. This isn’t The Walking Dead or George A. Romero’s famed trilogy. It’s not that type of film. Rather, it’s concerned with underscoring glimpses of humanity and focusing on grief more than anything else.

The film essentially follows three stories and three reanimated corpses. There’s Anna (Renate Reinsve), a mother grieving over the loss of her child Elias. This puts her at odds with her father, Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist). Then there’s the widow Tora (Bente Børsum), who misses her partner, Elisabet (Olga Damani). The third story follows David (Anders Danielsen Lie) and his family, who lost their mother Eva (Bahar Pars) due to a car accident. The film balances all three stories quite well without jumbling the narratives.

After a power outage, Eva starts breathing in the hospital, though she has no heartbeat. Elisa and Elisabet also come back to life, if you can call it that. None of the corpses act much like their former selves, no matter how much the living may desire that. They don’t talk, and they seem to have no recollection of who they were. Elisabet, for instance, just slow walks around her home, as if totally unconscious. It’s an incredibly haunting sequence, and this film has plenty of those.

More importantly, the director is especially interested in focusing on the impact the loss of a loved one can have, especially when it hits a family suddenly, like Elias and Eva’s untimely deaths. Yet, even if three characters are technically zombies, there are flashes of their humanity, including an emotionally devastating scene that shows Tora and Elisabet dancing together, as if Elisabet was still actually alive. In another emotional moment, Mahler tries again and again to encourage Elias to play with a remote-control car, but he just stands there as his grandfather’s frustration boils over. These scenes hit the hardest.

Handling the Undead does have its horror moments, especially within the last 20 minutes, but they’re really not the highlight of the film. There’s one animal death in particular that’s incredibly hard to watch, especially the sounds. When some of the deaths come, they hit hard because Hvistendahl really takes her time building the characters, their worlds, and the pasts they inhabited before tragedy struck. We also see how a death, especially when sudden, can cause a break within a family. This is especially true of Anna and Mahler. Death plays out in various ways throughout this film, with severe repercussions that hit the living hard.

Don’t expect a typical zombie film with Handling the Undead. Instead, this is an atmospheric, poetic, and often times melancholy feature. It’s more concerned with exploring the anguish and sorrow death can cause, especially when sudden. But it’s also filled with plenty of tender and even profound moments. Hvistendahl’s feature debut is a thought-provoking, moving, and somber work.

7.5 Out of 10