On a hot summer day in Oslo a mysterious pulse brings the recently dead back to life. Based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel and co-scripted by Lindqvist and director Thea Hvistendahl, Handling the Undead is a zombie film but not how audiences generally understand the genre. Starring Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Norwegian film legend Bente Børsum, Handling the Undead takes a well-known genre and adds a grounded human element.
Nadine Whitney spoke to Thea Hvistendahl about her film which is available in Australia and New Zealand via SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT from 31 July 2024.
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Handling the Undead is not so much a horror story about zombies it's a horror story about grief and how we each process it and how isolated we are within it. What drew you to John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel and the project.
Thea Hvistendahl: I think I love in general all his work, but I think with this novel it was how he handled the premise that I really enjoyed. How naturalistic it was and how realistic. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the seriousness of it.
The emotional impact mixed with that dreadful uncanny feeling I think that was like the main thing that drew me to it, but then of course there's also a lot of great ideas in the novel I wanted to incorporate into the film. So, it was mainly the feeling that the novel gave me and the characters and the genre really.
It's such a mixture of genre piece but a very serious grounded drama also. There is the unexplained event bringing back those who have recently died it not so much to life but to limbo; to a slower form of death again because they they're still in decomposition. I resonated with the way you set up three discrete families who are dealing with different time variances of death.
Mahler (Bjørn Sundquist) and Anna (Renate Reinsve) with the child Elias (Dennis Østry Ruud) who is been dead long enough that he's he started to decompose. Then you've got Tora (Bente Børsum) and Elisabet (Olga Damani) and that's immediate Elisabet has just died. Finally, there is David (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Eva (Bahar Pars) with their children Flora (Inesa Dauksta) and Kian (Kian Hansen). A family we briefly get to know before Eva’s death. Handling the Undead has three different sections of grief and time within it. Each of those is quite different.
Can you tell me about setting up specifically Tora and Elisabet because they're the only two we don't see interacting with anything outside their own domestic world.
TH: They’re actually not in the book. Part of the script I inherited as it was initially for Swedish director, but that film didn't get made. That version that I got from him there was shorter version of that story but with a man and woman and based on a news headline.
When working with that story I would say that it was most natural death. It was important to get to know them as a couple even though you don't really do so because Elisabet is dead by the time that we meet her. Trying to create how empty it is without her and how long they have lived together. To envision how it feels like when you had this relationship for so long and you can use to care for another person, but that person is no longer there.
Then she comes back, and I just wanted it to be like a small little bubble where when Tora gets Elisabet back. I think for all of them they don't really understand what's happening, but they don't want to scare them either because even though they look very different and are not the same. I guess it's like a mechanism in their brain trying to protect what's there. I wanted to show that, and I think that at some level Tora understands that it is not right, but she wants to keep the magic or the impossible alive for as long as she can.
Mahler’s grief is so strong he is lost and gripping Anna too tightly. When he brings Elias back from his grave there is an intense scene which is an incredible piece of filmmaking – shocking and somehow true.
Another thing you captured perfectly is how grey and empty the world is after someone dies. Even though everything is still happening in the world it's happening in this kind of liminal way. The whole of Oslo is going through this bizarre event, and it is like the city is empty. It’s also the kind of headspace that you're in when you're grieving. Was that a deliberate decision to create that kind of vibe?
TH: Yes, it was actually Bjørn Sundquist who played Mahler who helped describe that. We spoke a lot about grief and bereavement because I haven't lost someone like that. He told me when you're in that mode or when you're grieving that hard the beauty of the world kind of disappears. People can tell you that it's a beautiful sunset or something but it's like you can't really see it. That was something that I wanted to bring into the visuals of the story.
But also, to gradually put in a little bit more natural beauty when they get away from the city. Nature can be healing - though it's a cliche thing to say. Nature is painful it’s also very beautiful. The world does still go on and like the it continues. It’s life circle.
It does, but when you're grieving you can actually resent the fact that the world goes on which is why someone like Mahler is so powerfully connected to keeping his grandson Elias with them. Anna clearly loves her son, but she is aware that the half-life is hurting him It’s a really terrible emotional situation for them both to be in.
David and Eva are interesting too because we do get to know them in a brief moment where we see the dynamics between them. David is head over heels in love with Eva she is a force of nature. There is a sense of that there are close family.
TH: Anders was the first person I cast, and I knew just by reading the book that I that I wanted Anders to play David because he would be able to take this absurd premise and situation and make it as like painful and realistic as it can be.
Quite soon afterwards I cast Barar as his wife and then when I had them together, they had very fun dynamic which I think was good, because it's only one scene kind of setting them up.
I thought about his storyline because after Eva dies, they are in this limbo confusion where they can’t get their closure because they're also kept away from the hospital. David has always been like a child in the family, so he has no idea how to communicate what’s happing in a good way. He's trying to protect the children I but he’s not sure himself what is happening. He’s trying to be honest but there's no way to be honest.
They're lost as well in this limbo as Eva was one of the first cases of someone reviving in a hospital. It’s quite static.
Flora is a fascinating character because when David comes home, she's the one who's calmly taking information from him and trying to calm him in an almost a parental way but then she just picks up and leaves. It’s a realistic dynamic because when someone dies families can get slightly fractured. Nobody quite knows what to say.
TH: The family gets fractured like when the Flora was away. I did a lot of research and I spoke to a lot of grief counsellors and therapists plus I read a lot about it as well. I find it interesting because sometimes when people read the script they would say, “Oh but I don't believe that David wouldn't just like take care of his kids and protect and be there for them.”
I need to show the reality that when people experience losing a loved one they can forget to shower or feed their kids for a day. There’s so much stuff going on people don’t know how to act. Everything gets fractured and broken and nobody really knows how to deal with it. Parents can also be transfixed or put out in the way that they usually aren't.
I think that I wanted a lot of these things to come forward as well and especially add a lot of other people in the way have this idea of how people and parents behave in the situation like that when it's actually not always how people do behave. In grief people don’t act in the way that other people would want.
I think that there was also a thing that I wanted to explore the film is how the longing for the past to become present or like the desire to have dead ones back often kind of ruins the relationships you have now. It’s depressing and also that's why they are so isolated from each other because they are unable to speak about it and unable to connect.
It's just so painful that the people that you love aren't able to be there for each other or to even make sure that they know you love them when you need to.