In just four days, the Norwegian horror movie Handling the Undead (2024) will be added to Hulu’s September lineup. In today’s day and age, moviegoers are spoiled for choice when it comes to zombie content. It can often feel like every angle of the zombie concept has been tried, and there’s little else to explore. Amid the saturated “fast zombie” movie market comes the chilling Norwegian horror movie Handling the Undead. Rather than exploring the tried and true zombie tropes like extreme violence, gore, and disease as its mainstay, this film turns to a much deeper message instead.
Roots in Prose
Handling the Undead is a film adaptation of Swedish horror novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist’s book of the same name. Only Lindqvist’s second published work, the novel was published in Swedish as Hanteringen av odöda in 2005 before being translated to English as Handling the Undead in 2009. Lindqvist is well-known for writing the popular horror-romance novel Let the Right One In (2004) and the screenplay for its subsequent film adaptation in 2008.
In August 2022, it was announced that Lindqvist and Norwegian filmmaker Thea Hvistendahl had penned a screenplay based on the book and casting had begun. Only a month later, Neon, an American film production and distribution company, acquired the rights to the film. Handling the Undead made its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in January; a week later it was screened at the Gothenburg Film Festival. After months of no news about a wider release, the movie will finally be added to streaming services. Expect to catch it on Hulu starting September 17th.
Subverting Zombie Tropes
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It’s only natural that a story that focuses on the dead coming back to life will pit its characters against major themes like loss and grief. Often, though, the characters are unsatisfied with their situations and seek to change them, because not fighting for change would mean succumbing to a horrifying, bloody world. This idea is explored in many zombie films and shows like World War Z (2013), The Walking Dead (2010-2022), and The Last of Us (2023).
The all-encompassing, world-ending nature of the zombie apocalypse in these works forces their characters to be world-savers. Often, their problems are bigger than themselves. While still including grief, their conflicts focus on the violence, gore, and unpredictability of a messy death. The horror comes from the way the death happened, not that the death happened at all. There are deafening firefights with zombie hordes or rival factions, zombies that sprint full speed toward their targets, and fungal infections that explode on nearby survivors. Handling the Undead turns all of these expected tropes for zombie media on their heads.
A Story of Loss And Acceptance
Rather than ruminate on the often bloody nature of death, Handling the Undead considers our relationship with it — and without it. Its scope is much narrower, focusing only on three families and their experiences with the return of the dead. A mother dies in a car accident, and her family is forced to reckon with her return before they’ve had a chance to mourn her passing. An old woman buries the love of her life, only to be reunited after the burial. In an attempt to save his daughter from her depression, a man pulls his grandchild from the grave.
More than a horror with elements expected of a horror movie, Handling the Undead is “a drama with elements of horror.” It is a slow burn that has little to offer in the way of gore and jump scares. Instead, it aims to explore the human relationship with death and things out of our control. Unlike in other zombie media where characters accepting their situations are often considered losing or giving up, in this film, it is the closure each protagonist desperately needs.
Final Thoughts
With so many popular zombie movies and TV shows out there, audiences have come to expect certain tropes. Often, the stories are expected to be gritty, rooted in violence and gore. Handling the Undead takes a different approach, considering death and un-death with a melancholy tone. The story is more somber than it is gruesome. If the need for something new and unprecedented arises when searching for your next movie, consider Handling the Undead when it drops on Hulu on September 17th.
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