Critic Reviews

The devastatingly bleak story of Handling the Undead is a wrenching but beautiful exploration of grief and human connection in the face of something horrific.

Full of frail, mortal feeling and overcast last-days imagery, Handling the Undead lingers coolly in the bones longer than many zombie films that offer more immediate, grisly gratification.

A zombie film unlike any other, focused less on mayhem than on grief, loss, and the quiet, tragic terror begat by the dead’s return.

There aren’t zombies rampaging through Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s quiet film. Instead, the spare, slow-paced, thoughtful film is an affecting story about coping with grief.

The strong cast and distinctive approach to a widely trafficked subgenre make it a soulful rumination on loss.

In making its characters physically confront their heartbreak, Handling the Undead becomes one of the saddest, most contemplative zombie movies ever made.

Hvistendahl gives her ensemble time and space to deliver the conflicted emotions they are feeling, a mixture of shock and longing playing out on their faces and in their movements.

Handling the Under is not an effective horror movie, but its zombie-drama formula allows for a portrait of pain that settles in and stays like an infection.

Handling the Undead is more of a philosophical journey than a survival journey.

There are times when the film veers too near the maudlin for comfort, but it always finds its way back to something spare and meaningful.