Sundance Film Festival: 'Handling the Undead' and 'A Real Pain'
An austere Scandinavian zombie movie and a warm Jesse Eisenberg comedy-drama.
There’s a long-running debate going on in horror movie circles about whether it’s scarier to have zombies that walk (“Night of the Living Dead”) or zombies that run (“28 Days Later”).
“Handling the Undead” posits a third option – zombies that don’t do anything at all. In Norwegian writer-director Thea Hvistendahl, the horror comes not from the undead but from the living, and how their grief over losing a loved one can take them to some dark places.
Characters shamble through the first half-hour of the movie in a daze, but they aren’t the zombies. They’re living people rendered numb with sorrow at a recent loss. Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) is a young mother who has lost her son, and needs her father (Bjorn Sundquist) to watch over her to make sure she doesn’t take her own life. An elderly woman Bente Borsum) is the only mourner at the funeral of her longtime partner (Olga Damani). And a stand-up comedian (Anders Danielson Lie, also of “Worst Person”) loses his wife (Bahar Pars) in a car accident.
Hvistendahl lingers on their suffering, shooting most of the film in a shroud of shadow, the characters half-obscured, as if they are barely present in the world. A score of rumbling bass and low strings adds to the ominous gloom.
And then, there’s a crackle of electrical energy in the air, and the recently deceased come back to life – barely. Their heart rates are low, their breathing is shallow, and they seem catatonic, making small gurgles and wheezes from somewhere deep in their bodies. But they are alive again.
Is that enough? Hvistendahl, adapting a novel from John Ajvide Lindqvist (“Let the Right One In”), plays out the drama with agonizing patience, as what seems like a blessing to the bereaved proves to be a curse. The old woman tries to pretend that her partner is her old self again, dragging her around her apartment in a grotesque dance to their favorite Nina Simone song. The mother and grandfather tend to the little boy as if he were a doll. And the father and his two teenage children look at their reanimated wife and mother with a heartbreaking mix of hope and dread.
There’s only one scene of “traditional” zombie violence in “Handling the Undead,” and that is handled discreetly. The horror here is more psychological and internal, and the film’s sadness lingers long afterwards. Grief will consume these people before the zombies ever do.
“Handling the Undead” is being distributed by NEON, so should be in theaters later this year.
Jesse Eisenberg playing a neurotic New Yorker – who’d-a thunk it? In “A Real Pain,” which Eisenberg also wrote and directed, Eisenberg plays Dave, a young father who is a bundle of anxieties, focused on not offending others and not doing the wrong thing. In the Uber on the way to the airport in the film’s opening scene, he sends a half-dozen phone messages to his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin), who he’s meeting there.
Benji doesn’t respond to any of them. He’s the polar opposite of Dave (or at first seems to be), a gregarious, outgoing stoner who cheerfully throws himself into any social situation and ends up being the life of the party. This modern-day Odd Couple are taking a trip to Poland together to see where their late grandmother was born, raised, and survived the Holocaust.
The tricky tone of comedy and drama that Eisenberg pulls off so beautifully is right there in the title. “A Real Pain” refers to how Benji and Dave likely see each other, as they bond and spar on the trip. But it also refers to the sincere emotional pain that both men are carrying deep inside, and to the collective trauma of the Jewish people. On the tour, Benji and Dave stay in posh hotels, take selfies in front of statues and befriend the other folks on their tour. But they also visit a concentration camp. It’s a testament to Eisenberg’s skill as a filmmaker that he leans into the obvious contradictions of such a trip.
It helps that “A Real Pain” is often very funny. Culkin brings the manic intelligence of a younger Robert Downey Jr. in playing Benji, a live wire who can whipsaw between unabashed joy and unexpected rage. He clearly has no control over himself and no interest in getting some.
And yet, Benji leaves a mark on everyone he meets, good or bad, while Dave glides through the world invisibly. Eisenberg gets to add more subtle shadings to his familiar character type, more depths of sadness but also resilience.
I really liked Eisenberg’s filmmaking debut, “When You Finish Saving the World,” which premiered at Sundance in 2022. But that was a film that satirized all its characters equally, while “A Real Pain” is one that offers empathy to all its characters, even at their worst. Dave and Benji may understand each other even less after the trip is over, but they appreciate each other more.
“A Real Pain” was acquired by Fox Searchlight after its Sundance premiere which makes a theatrical release later in the year almost certain.