The craving to reverse dying is baked into human nature, a longing to defeat evil, to set issues proper, to overcome mortality. In “Dealing with the Undead,” that want is the fruit of nice love. Who hasn’t, upon shedding somebody, wished desperately for only one extra probability to see them, maintain them, inform them how a lot they imply?
“Dealing with the Undead” has an earnest and easy premise that appears like sufficient for a complete thriller: In the future, out of nowhere, with little rationalization, the useless are reanimated en masse. The movie is unconcerned with the worldwide ramifications of this phenomenon; as a substitute, its focus is on three teams of Oslo residents whose lives are upended by the occasion.
There may be Mahler (Bjorn Sundquist) and his daughter, Anna (Renate Reinsve), a single mom whose younger son died a while in the past. The 2 of them, from the appears to be like of it, have by no means recovered from the loss — Mahler weeps on his grandson’s grave, whereas Anna tries to bury her anguish in work. In the meantime, Tora (Bente Borsum) grieves her accomplice, Elisabet (Olga Damani), who has died after their lengthy life collectively. And David (an excellent Anders Danielsen Lie), an aspiring comedian, is shocked when his beloved spouse, Eva (Bahar Pars), is killed in a automotive accident, barely understanding methods to preserve dwelling with their two youngsters.
That is merely the start of the story. However what follows is straightforward, and the director Thea Hvistendahl properly takes her time attending to any actual motion. As a substitute, with a slow-moving digicam and loads of filtered daylight, she conjures a dreamlike state, the sense of hanging between planes of existence that tends to accompany those that grieve. There are occasions when the movie veers too close to the maudlin for consolation, but it surely all the time finds its manner again to one thing spare and significant. What would you do, the story gently asks, in case your fondest and most unattainable want was granted, and also you realized it wasn’t in any respect what you’d hoped it might be? How far does actual love go to take care of a reference to these whose time has come?
Hvistendahl wrote the screenplay with John Ajvide Lindqvist, the writer of the novel on which the film relies (in addition to the quiet vampire story “Let The Proper One In”). The drama borrows from zombie films, however for one thing distinctly unzombielike. What’s below examination is the unusual permeable barrier between life and dying, and the way in which it seems to those that are left behind to cope with the fallout. In exploring it with a touch of mysticism, “Dealing with the Undead” joins a wealthy number of leisure, like “Fringe,” “The Leftovers,” “The Good Place” and “Six Toes Below.”
It’s additionally a foundational plank within the “Avengers” movies, which take as one in every of their main plot factors the notion of what’s known as “the snap.” A villain manages to exterminate half of earth’s inhabitants, solely to have the method reversed 5 years later. Exterior of some TV present plotlines, the Marvel Cinematic Universe — being big-budget Hollywood leisure — has by no means actually managed to reckon in a satisfying manner with the chaos of a world the place the useless are made alive once more. As a substitute, the logistical nightmares and odd inevitable grief of the reversal (what in case you remarried, after which your partner out of the blue returned?) are shortly handled in favor of defeating the following huge unhealthy.
“Dealing with the Undead” additionally eschews any of the sensible questions, however with a extra humanist intent: to lean single-mindedly into its characters’ feelings — and in addition its eerie legendary resonance. It’s a somber movie, underplaying its potential for sentimentality. However it does have an oddly cheeky starting. Because the digicam slowly strikes by way of Mahler’s drab flat, we hear a choir singing in English. “God so cherished the world, so cherished the world,” they start, within the British composer Bob Chilcott’s choral setting of John 3:16. Each verse and track finish with the promise that whoever believes in God’s son, Jesus, “shouldn’t perish however have eternal life, eternal, eternal life.”
The verse and its textual content are such a cultural touchstone that the oddly macabre implications may be misplaced. It’s meant to be considerably metaphorical, referring to an eternity spent within the presence of God, however on the floor it’s one thing a lot weirder: life that by no means ceases, that merely goes on and on, endlessly and ever, with out finish.
There’s one thing very terrifying in that premise (simply ask vampire films), and that’s what “Dealing with the Undead” faucets into. There’s an outdated truism that it’s dying that offers life which means, that mortality is what makes each second depend. However truisms grow to be truisms as a result of they’re true, and when a life ends, it modifications the folks it as soon as touched. It’s merciless and incorrect to recommend that dying is sweet — but it surely’s form, at the least, to recall what dying can imply to the dwelling.
Dealing with the Undead
Not rated. In Norwegian, with subtitles. Working time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
