Today brings us the first trailer for NEON’s Handling the Undead, a heavily buzzed-about zombie film directed by Thea Hvistendahl (Children of Satan) and based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (author of Let the Right One In).
From the looks of things, Hvistendahl’s film will be a zombie movie with big ideas on its mind, a fact that becomes very clear while reading over the film’s official (and unusually lengthy!) plot synopsis:
“On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want? A family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have even mourned her death after a car accident; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she has buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the gravesite in a desperate attempt to get his daughter out of her depression. Handling the Undead is a drama with elements of horror about three families, a story of grief and loss, but also about hope and understanding of what we can’t comprehend or control.”
Now let’s see what Handling the Undead looks like in action…
Well, that certainly looks unique! Zombie movies are often threaded through with meditations on death and grief, but those same zombie movies are frequently a bit more action-forward. Shotgun blasts to the head, improvised zombie-crushing vehicles, Molotov cocktails, what have you. Handling the Undead seems to be doing away with much of that action and sticking largely with the “grief and loss” bits, and we’re certainly curious to see what that’s like in practice! We’re guessing this will be a highly somber watch.
The good news is, early word on Handling the Undead is very strong: the film had its world premiere back in January, at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and the word from critics was largely positive (it’s currently sitting at an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes).
The further good news? We’re not gonna have to wait very long to see it: NEON will release Hvistendahl’s Handling the Undead in select theaters on June 7th (it will exclusively debut at the IFC Film Center in New York on May 31st), which is just a few weeks away!
Stay tuned for further updates on this one if and when they become available, and maybe avoid any graveyards between now and the film’s arrival in theaters later this month.
