Handling the Undead

Handling the Undead (2024) is Thea Hvistendahl's Norwegian horror drama, available to watch online on iFILM. A hushed film about the dead returning, with almost no gore and a great deal of grief.

On a sweltering summer day in Oslo the power fails, and the recently buried come back. Not as ravenous zombies but as silent, bewildered echoes of the people they used to be. A grandfather digs his grandson out of the cemetery, a mother killed in a crash opens her eyes on the operating table, and a freshly buried old woman simply walks home. Three families face a question no one is ready for: what do you do with a loved one who has returned but isn't quite there? Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie lead the cast.

It's adapted from a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote Let the Right One In, and carries the same chilly Scandinavian restraint. This is slow, nearly wordless cinema about how hard it is to let go. One for arthouse-horror fans ready for ache instead of jump scares. Stream Handling the Undead (2024) online on iFILM.