#Hanteringen av odöda

[anhed-nia]

Spoilers be here

The more I think about this movie the less I like it. Under the veneer of competence and sentimentality there may be nothing but a gimmick, and it's an old gimmick too: "What if we made a zombie movie but with REAL human drama instead of all that horror bullshit?" It feels like someone has to ask this question every few years and everybody treats it like it's a really novel idea, even though George Romero was immediately doing Real Human Drama when he invented the zombie subgenre as we know it, and he never stopped. I'm not really doing any kind of good or responsible film analysis here, I'm just venting about this personal pet peeve that won't die (ahem). But this is why I didn't like The Walking Dead (comic or show), because of all this posturing on the part of BOTH the writers and their audiences suggesting that it was really brave and sophisticated of them to have psychological realism and character deaths, and to say "This is NOT a story about scary monsters, it's REALLY about human nature etc" when they're really just imitating what Romero perfected decades earlier. And I mean it would be foolish to insist on originality in any case, but your familiar, derivative thing still needs to be good, it's not enough to just be very serious and self-satisfied. I'm not so sure that HANDLING THE UNDEAD is anything more than just very satisfied with its own seriousness.

Another thing I don't like so much here is also a reoccurring issue in modern horror cinema, and it is also supposed to confer instant sophistication onto a film without the hassle of good writing: that thing of being deliberately ambiguous with your story. I happen to have a very high tolerance for this, in fact I am less tolerant of movies that bend over backwards to rationalize and explain themselves; I mean film is a visual and atmospheric medium, you should be able to tell me a complete story without trying to convince me that it happened in real life. But if you're going to do that thing where some facts are deliberately left in shadow and there are no easy answers etc, there should be a real motivation for it other than just trying to seem smart and artsy. Like in TROUBLE EVERY DAY, which feels like it has about twelve lines of dialog, you don't need any more information than what you get in order to feel fully involved with the story, and in fact more information might have just made the film feel bloated and defensive. But some filmmakers seem like they've decided to be withholding as a stylistic gesture--like they're doing it because they saw Claire Denis (or someone) do it. They don't know why Denis does it, they're just jealous of that bewitching power she has, so they're going to leave stuff out too. But if you don't know what you're doing, this can be really detrimental, for instance:

Some of the characters in HANDLING THE UNDEAD have some sort of troubled past that is not explained. An angsty young burnout doesn't resolve whatever-the-problem-is with her mother before the mom gets zombified, and this is supposed to make their situation extra fraught...but in reality the conclusions are all the same as with all the other characters, "It's really sad when someone dies, you can never go home again, etc." Meanwhile in another segment a woman and her father contend with the re-animation of her five year old son, which raises huge questions not the least of which is "How does a five year old die?" I mean this isn't the dark ages, they don't just expire from obscure weaknesses. And there's this unexplained enmity between the woman and her father, and it's impossible to tell if they're just "dealing with grief differently" or if one of them is specifically culpable in the child's death or what...but once again none of this impacts the answer to the movie's central question, once again it all just boils down to "It's really sad when someone dies." Which frankly is something that nobody really needs to be told. But I think if you propose but refuse to answer a question that is way more intriguing than the central question that you do answer, then that's a big problem and you should rethink why you're doing things the way you're doing them. The End.

HANDLING OF THE UNDEAD (Hanteringen av odöda)

There's a certain common experience of comic awkwardness--actually there's even a Mr. Show sketch about it, if I remember correctly--where, after bidding a sincere farewell to someone at the end of an enjoyable night out, you make the unfortunate realization that you're both walking the same way home. Emotionally you are both somewhere else now, "the night" is conceptually over, and now you're trapped together without a script. Although Thea Hvistendahl's feature debut HANDLING THE UNDEAD probably has nothing else in common with Mr. Show, they both ask this same basic question about closure and the persistence of the past. The film concerns three families of the recently re-animated; there's a sort of will they/won't they tension regarding the obvious question of whether these zombies will behave in the traditional manner, but the focus is more strongly on the emotional problem of accepting that things will never again be as they once were.

I think this film is really going to do it for modern horror fans who have come to expect direct explorations of tough topics like grief and trauma. For me personally, I found it highly competent, but a little flat; yes, it is sad, it is VERY sad, it is VERY, VERY SAD, and what more can one really expect? At my screening director Hvistendahl was available for questions, and she candidly confessed that she didn't have any personal experiences with grief to which she could refer--a fact that had no impact on the amount of sniffling in the audience. She inherited the project from others, after a few false starts over the last decade; it is adapted from a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, better known for LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, and the writer really did have a powerful reference point for grief. According to Hvistendahl his father was literally defaced in a hideous boating accident and, despite the warnings of morgue workers, he insisted on viewing the body. The filmmaker says that her own reference points lay outside her life; that she drew inspiration from others who'd had closer encounters with death.

Personally, I started thinking about people I've known who died early in the film, and then I just couldn't stop. I wondered what would happen if various people came back. The basic assumption might be that it's usually desirable to have somebody back, if you missed them. But I feel like things are likely to be more complicated, especially if the living have already gone some distance through the grieving process--potentially accessing feelings that were too hard to face during the deceased's lifetime.

I thought about a much-admired friend, somebody who was kind of my hero and who was adored by everyone who knew her, who killed herself. The main initial reaction among her closest loved ones was rage. People were so, SO angry with her for leaving them, or not allowing them to save her, or maybe for forcing them to feel as sad and lonely as she felt, or for whatever other things seem to piss people off so much about suicide. I don't know what would happen if she came back to life. I mean probably a lot of people would lay down their arms and try to be grateful, but who knows. That kind of really personal anger can be hard to come back from.

I also thought about a couple I know well, the wife was extremely well-loved by many people, all of whom were devastated when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The painful, protracted illness made the loss all the more awful, and it fell to her surviving family members to preserve and sort of reenact her memory for everyone else. But the reality was that things were not so perfect at home--not to suggest anything really dark, but the couple would have been divorced had she survived. So then she died and her widower was left holding the proverbial bag; he could never have the personal satisfaction of separating from someone who was not right for him, and criticizing her would be unthinkable. If she came back to life...sure, they might divorce, but it's just as likely that he would suffer public pressure to honor and keep her in a more extreme way than usual for the rest of his life.

Finally I thought about a friend of mine who was murdered. I watch a lot of slasher movies, and whenever I hear the criticism that horror lovers must all be desensitized or delusional about real violence, I think about this person who was senselessly killed by a random psychopath at her sister's wedding. It shattered our circle of friends and I cannot imagine what it did to her family, especially her sister. I mean even if they were to do another wedding, it would be impossible not to think of the murder the second time. It would be permanently associated with the new couple. It's hard to even wrap your mind around all the effects of this event. In this case--setting aside the problems of zombies, which I have left out of my meditation--I can only think that having my friend back really would fix things for everyone.

So maybe ultimately I'm saying that HANDLING THE UNDEAD would be a more interesting movie if the losses in it were a bit more complicated in some way. However, I can't ask one film to be all things to all people, and surprise is a particularly difficult thing to achieve. But if you like John Ajvide Lindqvist and you want to be surprised, I strongly advise you to watch BORDER. You will see some stuff in there that you will never see anywhere else in your life, and it probably won't bum you out too much.

[uageek]

🌟 НК Богдан анонсували попередній план видання горорів на 2024 рік.

📕🧛‍♀️ «Låt den rätte komma in» Йона Айвіде Ліндквіста 📜 1981 рік, місто Блакберг, Швеція. Оскар — дванадцятирічний хлопчик, якого цькують у школі. Він самотній і любить уявляти, як одного дня він стане достатньо сильним, щоб убити своїх кривдників. Елі — вампір. Їй теж дванадцять, тільки її дванадцять триває уже дуже довго. Вона самотня і харчується людською кров'ю, щоб вижити. Хокан — педофіл. Він допомагає Елі виживати. Він кохає її. Елі для нього — сенс існування, його богиня. Вона близько до нього і водночас нездоланно далеко. Однієї довгої морозної шведської ночі, Хокан та Елі оселяються по сусідству із Оскаром. І одночасно із цим в Блакеберзі розпочинаються вбивства.

📓🧟 «Hanteringen av odöda» Йона Айвіде Ліндквіста 📜 Стокгольм, 13 серпня 2002 р. Після тривалої спеки над містом виникло дивне електричне поле. Спалах вимкнув електромережі, не працюють машини, а люди страждають від головно болю. Але трапилось щось ще. Журналісту на пенсії Густаву Малеру телефонують із лікарні — мертві прокинулись. Його онука тільки нещодавно поховали на кладовищі. Чи прокинувся і він у своїй труні під землею? Елві доглядала за старим чоловіком до його останньої миті. Через два дні відбудуться похорони. Але посеред ночі у двері стукають. Коли дружина Девіда гине в автотрощі, він просить Бога повернути її. Але повернення до життя виглядає не так, як він сподівався. Мертві прокидаються, та чого вони хочуть? Можливо, того що й усі живі – повернутися додому.

📗🌳 «The Ritual» Адама Невілла 📜 Четверо друзів, щоб відволіктися від повсякденних турбот та проблем, вирушають у похід у заполярні пустки Швеції. Щоб скоротити шлях, вони вирішують пройти через ліс. Та, заглибившись в нетрі багатовікових ялин, вони розуміють, що збилися з дороги. На третій день блукань лісом їм трапляється дерево, на якому жорстоко розіп'ято якесь лісове звірятко. Потім вони натикаються на занедбаний будинок, горище якого служить притулком для опудала якогось огидного створіння, і напівзруйновану церкву, підвал якої забитий кістками давно вбитих людей. Із часом приходить розуміння — вони тут зовсім не самі і смерть ще не найгірше, що може спіткати їх у нетрях стародавнього лісу.

📘👿 «Last Days» Адама Невілла 📜 Перебуваючи на межі банкрутства, режисер Кайл Фріман отримує пропозицію, від якої не може відмовитися: за значний гонорар зняти документальний фільм про давно забуту секту Храм Судних днів, майже всі члени якої наклали на себе руки в 1975 році. Все здавалось досить простим: три локації, десять днів зйомок і кілька свідків, що вижили, які готові розповісти історію Храму на камеру. Але що далі заходять зйомки, то страшніші події починають ставатися навколо знімальної групи: гинуть люди, дивні видіння переслідують самого режисера, а на місці зйомок він знаходить скелети невідомих істот, що проступають зі стін. Незабаром Кайл розуміє, що Храм Судних днів у свої окультних пошуках щось знайшов, щось жаске і потойбічне, і розпитування Кайла привернули його увагу.

[astinginthetalealexandrailieva]

John Ajvide Lindqvist

Career

Lindqvist's debut novel, Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), a romantic vampire horror story published in 2004, enjoyed great success in Sweden and abroad. Handling the Undead (Hanteringen av odöda) was published in 2005 and involved the rising of the dead as zombies, referred to as the "re-living", in the Stockholm area.

In 2006, he released his third book, Pappersväggar (Paper Walls, published in English as Let the Old Dreams Die), a collection of short stories. In 2007, his story "Tindalos" was published as a serial in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and as a free audiobook available through the newspaper's website, read by the author himself. His works are published in Sweden by Ordfront and have been translated into many languages, including English, Bulgarian, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Norwegian, Danish, French, Polish, Czech, Dutch and Russian.

Lindqvist was also a writer for the television series Reuter & Skoog (1999) and wrote the screenplays for Sveriges Television's drama series Kommissionen (2005) and the film Let the Right One In, based on his novel.

The production company Tre Vänner bought the film rights to Handling the Undead and were planning a future production. However, heavy interest in an American version led to the request to sell the rights to an American company. Lindqvist refused and the film went unmade. Tre Vänner's rights for an adaptation expired in 2012.

Inspirations

Lindqvist is a Morrissey fan. The name of his debut novel was inspired by the Morrissey song "Let the Right One Slip In" and one of the short stories in Pappersväggar was named after the song "Shoplifters of the World Unite". The influence of Morrissey's music became involved in the actual plot of Harbour, where two of the main characters are devoted Morrissey fans who live out much of their lives by speaking in quotes from Morrissey's songs.

Lindqvist's father drowned , and the sea has appeared in several of his works as a dark and sinister force, such as in Handling the Undead and a short story in Pappersväggar. In Harbour the sea has a prominent role as a menacing presence and could be considered the villain of the novel. Furthermore, Let the Right One In features a pivotal near-drowning scene in a gym swimming pool.

[kythwena]

He couldn’t handle this. Benny and all the rest of them had every right to joke about something as current as this, in fact they were obliged to, but he didn’t have to listen. He walked quickly through the bar and out of the doors onto the street. A new round of applause fired off behind him and he walked away from the sound. The painful thing was not that they were joking about it. There had to be jokes, jokes were necessary if people were going to keep living. The painful thing was that it had happened so quickly. After the ferry Estonia sank, for example, it had taken six months before anyone tried to say anything funny about ferry salvage or bow doors, and then without much success. The World Trade Center had gone much faster. Only a couple of days after the attack ‘someone said something about the new cut-price alternative Taliban Airways, and people had laughed. It had been far enough away to feel like it wasn’t really happening. Apparently the reliving fell into the same category. They weren’t real, you didn’t have to have any respect. That’s why David’s presence had been hard for the other comedians to take; he made it real. But in the end that’s what the reliving were to them: a joke.

Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist

[artoklasia-archive]

...teach a man to fish...

[bajolapluma]

En efemérides literarias del día 02 de Diciembre, celebramos el cumpleaños de John Ajvide, escritor sueco de novelas de terror e historias cortas. La primera novela de Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), una historia romántica de terror de vampiros publicada en 2004, tuvo un gran éxito en Suecia y en el extranjero. Handling the Undead (Hanteringen av odöda) se publicó en 2005 e involucró el levantamiento de los muertos como zombies, conocido como el "revivir", en el área de Estocolmo. En 2006, lanzó su tercer libro, Pappersväggar (Paper Walls, publicado en inglés como Let the Old Dreams Die), una colección de cuentos. En 2007, su historia "Tindalos" se publicó como una serie en el periódico sueco Dagens Nyheter y como un audiolibro gratuito disponible en el sitio web del periódico, leído por el propio autor. Sus obras son publicadas en Suecia por Ordfront y han sido traducidas a muchos idiomas, incluidos inglés, búlgaro, alemán, italiano, español, chino, hindi, noruego, danés, francés, polaco, checo, holandés y ruso. #libro #recomendaciones #libroinstagram #bookstagram #libros📚 #librosymaslibros #amoloslibros #leer #amoleer #pontealeer #lector #lectores #esdelectores #lectora #lectoras #esdelector #unlectorentiende #unlectorentendera #amantedeloslibros #amantesdeloslibros #bajolapluma #efemerides #efemeridesliterarias #johnavjidelindqvist #cumpleaños https://www.instagram.com/bajolapluma/p/CXFvVK_LObf/?utm_medium=tumblr

[photofabulicious]

|| h i m m e l s t r a n d || || 06:34 || ..... Underbara John Ajvide Lindqvist! Åh vad jag älskar denna författare. Det var väldigt många år sedan jag läste något av honom sist och det ångrar jag. Han kan verkligen konsten att skriva en fängslande berättelse. Himmelstrand är finstämd och värmande, trots alla hemska människor i boken. Och den är läskig... För det är det John Ajvide Lindqvist gör bäst... Att skriva riktiga rysare med övernaturliga fenomen. Läste ut boken väldigt snabbt. Det visar på hur bra Himmelstrand är! Tidigare har jag läst "Låt den rätte komma in", "Människohamn" och "Hanteringen av odöda" av samma författare. Denna är i helt klart i klass med det bästa han gjort. Älskart! ..... Betyg: 4 av 5 ..... Annars hade jag en helt ok natt på drömslottet. Fick göra lite allt möjligt. Det gillar jag. Imorgon blir det ett tolv timmar extrapass. Plånboken tackar för det! Annars blev det väldigt lite sömn... Blev en massa telefonköande när jag vaknade. Bankhärva angående lån osv. Men ingenting gick att lösa nu... Var tvungen att boka in en tid till mitt bankkontor nästa vecka. Suck. Är så less på mina trötta selfies, så här får ni en mag/kalsongbild. Hahaha. Skönt att magen krymper som vegetarian iaf.😂😜 Hoppas att ni får en bra helg. Lev livet medan ni har ett liv att leva!❤️ . . . . . Tags: (på/i Stockholm, Sweden)

[acid-fuzz]

Så jäkla taggad på att få hem denna! Det har dröjt på tok för länge sedan jag sist satt med en alldeles färsk John Ajvide Lindqvist-bok i händerna alltså, detta är så otroligt efterlängtat!

[luftslottetsomsprangdes-blog]

[skelettflickan]

Thought i might as well post these doodles from last year. Magnus (and his rabbit) and Elias from "Handling the undead"

[heartandthesoul]

Omg they are gonna make a movie of Handling the Undead! *flail*

If they handle it as well as Let the right one in it's going to be amazing!

Then hopefully they'll do Harbour as well, it's my favorite Ajvide Lindquist novel

[kythwena]

That evening in Elvy’s garden she had wished-she had known that something was going to happen. Something that would change Sweden forever. Now it had happened, and what was the change? Nothing. Terror gave birth to terror, hatred begat hate and all that was left in the end was a pile of burnt bodies. As everywhere; as always.

Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist

[anhed-nia]

HANDLING OF THE UNDEAD (Hanteringen av odöda)

There's a certain common experience of comic awkwardness--actually there's even a Mr. Show sketch about it, if I remember correctly--where, after bidding a sincere farewell to someone at the end of an enjoyable night out, you make the unfortunate realization that you're both walking the same way home. Emotionally you are both somewhere else now, "the night" is conceptually over, and now you're trapped together without a script. Although Thea Hvistendahl's feature debut HANDLING THE UNDEAD probably has nothing else in common with Mr. Show, they both ask this same basic question about closure and the persistence of the past. The film concerns three families of the recently re-animated; there's a sort of will they/won't they tension regarding the obvious question of whether these zombies will behave in the traditional manner, but the focus is more strongly on the emotional problem of accepting that things will never again be as they once were.

I think this film is really going to do it for modern horror fans who have come to expect direct explorations of tough topics like grief and trauma. For me personally, I found it highly competent, but a little flat; yes, it is sad, it is VERY sad, it is VERY, VERY SAD, and what more can one really expect? At my screening director Hvistendahl was available for questions, and she candidly confessed that she didn't have any personal experiences with grief to which she could refer--a fact that had no impact on the amount of sniffling in the audience. She inherited the project from others, after a few false starts over the last decade; it is adapted from a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, better known for LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, and the writer really did have a powerful reference point for grief. According to Hvistendahl his father was literally defaced in a hideous boating accident and, despite the warnings of morgue workers, he insisted on viewing the body. The filmmaker says that her own reference points lay outside her life; that she drew inspiration from others who'd had closer encounters with death.

Personally, I started thinking about people I've known who died early in the film, and then I just couldn't stop. I wondered what would happen if various people came back. The basic assumption might be that it's usually desirable to have somebody back, if you missed them. But I feel like things are likely to be more complicated, especially if the living have already gone some distance through the grieving process--potentially accessing feelings that were too hard to face during the deceased's lifetime.

I thought about a much-admired friend, somebody who was kind of my hero and who was adored by everyone who knew her, who killed herself. The main initial reaction among her closest loved ones was rage. People were so, SO angry with her for leaving them, or not allowing them to save her, or maybe for forcing them to feel as sad and lonely as she felt, or for whatever other things seem to piss people off so much about suicide. I don't know what would happen if she came back to life. I mean probably a lot of people would lay down their arms and try to be grateful, but who knows. That kind of really personal anger can be hard to come back from.

I also thought about a couple I know well, the wife was extremely well-loved by many people, all of whom were devastated when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The painful, protracted illness made the loss all the more awful, and it fell to her surviving family members to preserve and sort of reenact her memory for everyone else. But the reality was that things were not so perfect at home--not to suggest anything really dark, but the couple would have been divorced had she survived. So then she died and her widower was left holding the proverbial bag; he could never have the personal satisfaction of separating from someone who was not right for him, and criticizing her would be unthinkable. If she came back to life...sure, they might divorce, but it's just as likely that he would suffer public pressure to honor and keep her in a more extreme way than usual for the rest of his life.

Finally I thought about a friend of mine who was murdered. I watch a lot of slasher movies, and whenever I hear the criticism that horror lovers must all be desensitized or delusional about real violence, I think about this person who was senselessly killed by a random psychopath at her sister's wedding. It shattered our circle of friends and I cannot imagine what it did to her family, especially her sister. I mean even if they were to do another wedding, it would be impossible not to think of the murder the second time. It would be permanently associated with the new couple. It's hard to even wrap your mind around all the effects of this event. In this case--setting aside the problems of zombies, which I have left out of my meditation--I can only think that having my friend back really would fix things for everyone.

So maybe ultimately I'm saying that HANDLING THE UNDEAD would be a more interesting movie if the losses in it were a bit more complicated in some way. However, I can't ask one film to be all things to all people, and surprise is a particularly difficult thing to achieve. But if you like John Ajvide Lindqvist and you want to be surprised, I strongly advise you to watch BORDER. You will see some stuff in there that you will never see anywhere else in your life, and it probably won't bum you out too much.

[kythwena]

When the military comes into the picture, something else goes out the window.

Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist

[kythwena]

Flora had self-destructive tendencies, according to her school counsellor. Elvy didn’t know if that was better or worse than the  diagnosis she’d received herself at the same age: hysterical. In the fifties, as the welfare state flowered and the final victory of rationality seemed imminent, it was not a nice thing to be hysterical. Even Elvy had cut her arms and legs then-inner pain, outer pressures. This problem hadn’t even existed back then. No one had the right to be unhappy.

Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist

[kythwena]

The green force of the flower. Not inevitable. Everything is effort, work. A gift. It can be taken from us. It can be given back.

Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist