Handling the Undead (Handtering av Udode) is that rarest of zombie films – one that doesn’t seem to actually be about zombies.
Based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, to say that this Norwegian slow burner takes its time is an understatement; it’s slower than the blue-faced shamblers in the original Dawn of the Dead, and just about as gore-free as Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead.
That’s not to say the film brings nothing to the table, though – and, admirably, Handling the Undead has far more on its mind than most of what the subgenre has brought to the table in the last three decades. Handling the Undead hangs its hat on a single supernatural premise – what if, one day, an electrical storm resurrected the bodies of the recently deceased? – and proceeds to treat it with more or less a singularly natural approach.
In many ways, the film is less a zombie flick than a family drama; less interested in any outright horror than in examining themes like grief and bereavement through a horror-adjacent lens. It’s a film where the horror doesn’t come from that thin scratching on the underside of a coffin lid, or from the filmy, glassy-eyed stare of a recently reanimated corpse, but from the – very real – horrors of losing the people we love the most.
Handling the Undead focuses on three families, all of whom are reeling in the grip of a recent loss. There’s Anna (played by Renate Reinsve, excellent here after being totally underutilised in the also brilliant Presumed Innocent), and her father Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist), who are both still struggling to come to terms with the loss of Anna’s son Eli; An older woman Tora (Bente Borsum), torn asunder by the loss of her partner Elisabet (Olga Damani); and a family of four, led by father David (Anders Danielsen Lie), who say goodbye to their matriarch Eva (Bahar Pas) in the morning, not knowing that – owing to a tragic accident – it’s for the last time. Though not, of course, the last time we’ll see her.
Eva (Bahar Pas) cuts a grim figure as one of Handling the Undead's eponymous zombies.
As the film plays out and the bodies of all three sons, wives, and mothers are returned to their families, we get a sobering – and frequently visceral – look at the varying degrees in which each are reintegrated back into “life”.
It’s worth noting here, of course, that these zombies bear little in common with the kind you’re used to. Yes, there’s the glassy, vacant stare; the sluggish, rigor mortis-induced movement. The reanimated people come back with no memory, no ability to communicate, and no real agency or desire for food or sustenance. They're essentially empty shells of their former selves, and their existence is more tragic and unsettling than monstrous. Again, the return of these vessels is more psychological and emotional than it is physical.
Handling the Undead is less interested in its titular undead, at the expense of a focus on the relationships and lives the recently reanimated are returning to.
Beyond that, though, Handling the Undead’s zombies don’t really do…anything. We see their loved ones dress them, hold them, bathe them – this latter scene a particularly cringe-inducing one, as Mahler, washing his recently reanimated grandson’s hair in the bathtub, watches impassively as large chunks and clots of flesh fall away from the corpse’s scalp – with none seeming overly phased at their lifeless loved ones’ dissimilarity to their old selves. It’s mostly heartbreaking, rather than hideous, and director Thea Hvistendahl shoots the picture with a slow and calm (yet never incurious) gaze.
We get long, lingering shots of a mouldy apple rotting, alone, in a forgotten fruit bowl; of flies scuttling across a table. We get reaction shots, family dynamics; we see Anna’s attempt at suicide and David’s struggles to connect with his rebellious daughter Flora (Inesa Dauksta). It’s a moving (albeit slowly moving – hehe) thinkpiece of a film that, like the best cinema, places us in the homesteads of each grieving family and asks us, unflinchingly – what would we do in those situation?
Like I said, the zombies aren’t the real focus. Heck, they don’t even behave like actual zombies…until, that is, they do.
Handling the Undead’s last 15 minutes aren’t at all much like the first 75 – and because of that, I don’t want to spoil them; although you can read the Handling the Undead: Ending Explained section below for a rundown of the film's grisly denoument, if you so choose – as each story unfolds in its own heart wrenching way.
Handling the Undead's wild ending comes out of NOWHERE – read on as I explain the ending below. (There will, naturally, be spoilers.)
Love, death (and, yes, a little bit of gore) come together as a hospital, a bedroom, and a remote lakeside cabin become each storyline’s final resting place. And, though the film’s ponderous pace and occasionally laborious visual metaphors – at the expense of any substantial plot – may cause the film to wear out its welcome with some viewers, some of the final frames it leaves you with are sure to sear themselves into your brain.
Even though we don’t see all too many brains getting eaten.
Handling the Undead (2024) Ending Explained
A little confused at the ending of Handling the Undead (2024)?
You’re not alone – I mean, I sure was. Let me break it down.
The main big reveal of Handling the Undead’s ending is that the recently returned dead – I’m still loathe to call them zombies, exactly – turn out to be flesh-eating after all. After remaining largely static and motionless for the entirety of the movie (and showing little interest in doing much of anything, let alone tucking into some human chow), the film’s final minutes begin to lift the veil on a darker side to these walking corpses. (Who knew?)
The zombie Eva, having been handed a rabbit to hold by her family, slowly crushes the life out of it with her bare hands. (The family’s reactions, which we see in lieu of the animal violence, will stay with you a long time.) The zombie Elisabet won’t eat, and instead snaps at Tora with gnashing teeth when her partner tries to get her to take sustenance; we see Elias, similarly, take a little bite out of his mother Anna.
In perhaps the most outright horror scene of Handling the Undead, though, Anna and Mahler flee to a cabin in the woods, desperate to keep the secret of Elias’s reanimation – and, therefore, their son and grandson – under wraps. Yet there’s an unexpected visitor – one of the recently reanimated dead, lurking ominously near the window.
This is the first time we’ve ever seen one of the zombies in a non-domestic setting, and – as the zombie pursues Mahler down to the water as the grandfather tries to prepare the boat – we begin to get the sense that their behaviour is changing.
Mahler confronts the zombie, and the next thing we see of him he’s lying, prostrate, as the zombie makes a meal on the sinew and muscle in the poor chaps’s neck.
Alright, alright – the titular undead of Handling the Undead are, indeed, ZOMBIES!!!
Anna uses the boat to get away but, realising the empty mass of blood and bone in her arms isn’t really her boy anymore, lets him go – literally. She places him in the lake, and the corpse slips away into the depths. Our final story (the elderly Tora and her reanimated lover Elisabet) ends in similarly tragic fashion, with Tora electing to end her own life – in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Bill and Frank in the wonderful The Last of Us – lying next to Elisabet, in the bedroom the two shared in life.
The only kicker? (And it’s a sick, twisted one.) We see Elisabet sat, hunched in the doorframe, eating a torn scrap of flesh from her partner’s face. Grisly!
Enjoyed this review – and got an appetite for more undead content? It’s on the opposite end of the spectrum to Handling the Undead, but my Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992) review should satisfy a few cravings. Enjoy – and thanks for spending some time with me today!
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