Thea Hvistendahl, writer-director of “Handling the Undead,” steps to the microphone to answer a question at the post-premiere Q&A on January 20 at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. (Photo by Michael Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance)
Surely there is nothing in this world worse than grief — that searing black hole in your chest, desperately missing someone you love, the crushing and impossible prospect of living without them.
But Handling the Undead, which opened January 20 at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, introduces the idea that, perhaps, there may be something worse — and much more complicated.
This Norwegian film possesses a title suggestive of a horror movie, but its story penetrates more deeply into the human psyche than eliciting screams and a fight-or-flight response. Although this is something of a zombie story, it is visually beautiful and haunting rather than frightening — and it’s likely comparable to nothing you’ve seen before.
Based on a book by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, adapted by writer-director Thea Hvistendahl in her feature film debut, the film follows three families whose loved ones return to life when an unexplained event in Oslo awakens the newly dead. Among the risen are Elias, the young son of Anna; Eva, loving wife and mother of two; and Elisabet, beloved wife of a well-to-do older woman. Their families gather around them, puzzled and alarmed at their appearance, but hopeful for a new start.
“What I really enjoyed about the book was the atmosphere and how it blended social realism with this unsettling feeling,” says Hvistendahl in the post-premiere Q&A. She wanted to create that same distinctive environment on film — “unsettling and a little bit heartbreaking.”
When Anna (Sundance regular Renate Reinsve), still in the fog of a lost and grieving state, sees her undead child for the first time — the unreal grayish skin, the unfocused sunken eyes, the constant moaning sound — she reacts almost numbly. “Your loved one has died,” says Reinsve in the Q&A. “You see it in a very different state, where it’s obviously not comfortable, and it’s a very gruesome sight.”
Composer Peter Raeburn says it was crucial that the music and the acting not be overdramatized. “As soon as we do that, we fall into manipulation. That was one of the things we couldn’t get wrong.”
Raeburn praised Hvistendahl’s bravery and vision for the film, not resorting to out-and-out horror, but instead taking the script and the cast to darkness and uncertainty.
Sundance alum Anders Danielsen Lie, who was paired with Reinsve in the 2022 Festival’s The Worst Person in the World, also returns to the Festival in this World Cinema drama. He portrays David, Eva’s husband, in a similar emotionally nuanced performance as Reinsve — both making it abundantly clear: This miraculous circumstance does not involve simply resuming life as a family.
Writer-director Thea Hvistendahl and actor Renate Reinsve pose for a photo at the premiere of “Handling the Undead” at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. (Photo by Michael Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance)
To see more of the magic of the 2024 Festival, click here.
