Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s zombie film “Dealing with the Undead,” premiering at Sundance and to be launched within the U.S. by Neon, sees the reunion of Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, the celebrities of Oscar-nominated “The Worst Particular person within the World,” in a poetic, visually-charged chronicling of a scorching summer season’s day in Oslo when the lifeless mysteriously come again to life.
Hvistendahl’s function debut, an adaptation of the eponymous novel by “Let the Proper One In” creator John Ajvide Lindqvist, isn’t your typical zombie film. “It’s essential to say to people who find themselves going to see it that they shouldn’t count on the common zombie flick. I made the movie with the zombie style in thoughts, and wished to subvert a few of the basic tropes, but when persons are solely on the lookout for a thrill, this movie won’t be it!,” quips the director.
Hvistendahl acquired the rights to Lindqvist’s novel again in 2019 after eager to adapt one in every of his books for years. Whereas the e-book expands on the story of a number of characters because the lifeless return to life within the Norwegian capital, the director in the end selected to concentrate on three parallel storylines for “Dealing with the Undead”: a not too long ago widowed older lady, a household of 4 who misplaced their matriarch, and a mom and grandfather who’re grieving following the demise of a younger boy. “Writing it was so tough,” the director provides. “I saved pondering: why didn’t I simply have one character with one drawback? However I used to be simply so drawn to the story and to the genre-bending in John’s books.”
The director credit her determination to have a toned down, dialogue-light style movie to eager to make a “film for the cinema.” “If you find yourself making an attempt to cowl an excessive amount of, it form of fizzles out, so I steadily started eradicating increasingly more dialogue. You don’t must feed your viewers with pointless info. Since what’s taking place is kind of absurd, I felt like speaking about it an excessive amount of would take away the house for the viewers to place themselves into the movie.”
This stylistic selection, in response to the director, was impressed by the likes of Lynne Ramsay and Lucile Hadžihalilović and is on par with Hvistendahl’s quick movies, usually closely stylized snapshots of a personality’s psychological decay. It was exactly the distinctive voice in Hvistendahl’s shorts that attracted Cannes greatest actress winner Renate Reinsve to “Dealing with the Undead.”
“[Thea] simply does her personal factor. She may be very courageous in her artistic selections and I knew she was going to do one thing completely different, one thing particular,” Reinsve tells Selection out of Sundance, the place she arrives with not solely “Dealing with the Undead” however Aaron Schimberg’s A24 psychological thriller “A Totally different Man,” through which she co-stars with Sebastian Stan.
“The film is about grief and loss, and what attracted me to [the character of] Anna is that she is so closed off, she is dealing with the grief of shedding her son like a machine,” the actress says. “She isn’t ready to connect with different folks or to herself. When she will get a second likelihood, it’s with a son who’s neither alive nor lifeless so there are all of those feelings of hope and confusion. She learns how one can settle for her grief and let go, and that’s what actually moved me in regards to the tales.”
Nonetheless, coping with such grief was not simple for Reinsve, who talked about scuffling with first seeing the doll created to symbolize the hardly alive son who Anna misplaced. “It was such a horrific picture. Seeing that little boy on the mattress gave me a panic assault. The response was not within the script however Thea ended up utilizing that model as a result of she thought it felt more true to how it will be prefer to be in that state of affairs. The entire course of was very painful, to be pondering of this little boy half lifeless and alive brought on me a lot ache.”
Talking in regards to the make-up and prop design course of, Hvistendahl mentioned that a few of the inspiration for the look of the undead got here from the e-book, however she spent a very long time speaking to pathologists and funeral administrators, on high of on the lookout for pictures on-line and in books. “Me and my particular results and make-up supervisor wished it to be as real looking as attainable. It’s scarier to have it real looking than monstrous.”
Hvistendahl is nicely conscious of the excitement surrounding the reunion of Reinsve and Danielsen Lie, and hopes folks received’t be upset to study the 2 don’t share a scene since they belong to completely different storylines inside the movie.
“Once I solid the 2, I didn’t understand how large a hit ‘The Worst Particular person within the World’ was going to be. Then I believed it was a bit wack that they didn’t play towards one another [laughs], however they had been undoubtedly one of the best ones for the components and we as a rustic don’t have quite a lot of actors to select from. I feel it’s good that individuals know them, and I perceive that lots of people are enthusiastic about seeing them collectively — it’s actually fortunate for me.”
The duo signed up for “Dealing with the Undead” earlier than Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Particular person within the World” made a giant splash on the 2021 Cannes Movie Pageant, with Danielsen Lie first telling Hvistendahl he and Reinsve had been headed to the French Riviera throughout a digital camera check for the zombie film three years in the past.
Reinsve says of reuniting with Danielsen Lie: “We talked about it being a social realism movie however going right into a fantastical section. We had been very curious as to how we had been going to do that and for the reason that storyline moved us a lot. We ended up connecting although we don’t share a scene collectively.”
She provides that “The Worst Particular person within the World” was “life-changing for folks, and for us as nicely,” and hopes folks will have the ability to relate to Anna, her character in “Dealing with the Undead,” as a lot as they did with hopeless romantic Julie. “Once I get into a personality I attempt to be altruistic — it’s not about me, it’s about folks connecting to this character.”
On high of getting two movies premiering at Sundance this 12 months, Reinsve simply completed capturing Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s “Armand” and can start capturing her subsequent collaboration with Trier in August, a household drama titled “Sentimental Worth.”
Different tasks within the pipeline embody “The Governess,” the sophomore function of “The Final Black Man in San Francisco” director Joe Talbot, alongside Lily-Rose Depp, and Piero Messina’s sci-fi “One other Finish,” starring Gael García Bernal and Bérénice Bejo.
