You’ve seen slow zombies, you’ve seen fast zombies, and you’ve seen ultra-fast zombies… but have you ever seen ultra-slow zombies? Zombies that don’t amble, they don’t shamble… they mainly just sit there, gathering flies.

Handling the Undead is a Norwegian horror (?) flick about what happens when your loved comes come back from the grave. What do they want? They don’t want anything. They don’t walk, they don’t talk, and they don’t want to eat your brains. They are beyond wants and needs which might be tougher than the usual zombie apocalypse.

This film has very little interest in direct world-building or character growth. It offers us a handful of families dealing with unsettled and unsettling dead and we barely get any conversations about what this is like… or why it’s happening. It’s just silently happening and the living have to deal with the intense sadness it brings.

Because that’s what this movie is… Despondency, Inc. It turns out the living dead are just here to be an emotional albatross around a sad new world.

I can’t say this is a fun movie… but it about something… though perhaps its more about how its about it. It’s one long dirge, one continuous pile of sadness. It is occasionally disturbing, to be sure… and there’s occasional violence but it’s largely not that type of movie. It’s really going to turn off some folk and I’d understand why.

But I wasn’t bored and I was often curious… but mainly I was just sad. This is not your usual zombie apocalypse and people wanting hard core blood and gore need look elsewhere. This is very much an art house film with art house thoughts and art house pacing. I went back and forth on a rating but decided to go high… for the acting, for the atmosphere, for the mood, and for the courage to create it.

Score: 86