ZRC Review – What We Become
You know a movie is going to happy places when it opens in media res with a scene of a woman screaming in terror in a darkened room.
More details below the cut.
‘What We Become’ (also known as ‘Sorgenfri’) is a Danish Zombie movie from 2016, now available for streaming via Netflix.
As mentioned, it’s not hugely cheerful, and its take on the Differently Animated is far from enlightened.
Ostensibly this movie is about the breakdown of society, as well as human decency, in response to a crisis. Zombie Apocalypse 101 fare, basically.
So the more idyllic the starting point, the better, and boy, ‘What We Become’ wants the pre-Zombie world to seem idyllic.
Our perfect nuclear family is so pure they sit around in all white clothes in their all white rooms petting their snow-white pet rabbit.
But of course, a mysterious virus comes, and overnight, literally, the government arbitrarily and ineffectually seals off the little town of Sorgenfri, ostensibly to contain the infection.
We get all the usual tropes, including misleading and/or inept scientists and talking heads on TV.
Eventually the family’s teen boy takes a break from peeping on the girl across the street to sneak out past curfew and discovers the government medical facilities are the sort of place that needs to move piles of corpses with heavy machinery.
Still, it’s never clear whether the government is being malicious, or just ruthless, in addressing the problem. Not that such nuance is needed for the teen, or the movie for that matter, and the apocalypse is on after a few semi-trailers full of poor Zombies are set free.
From there we get the usual self-destructive, everyone turns on everyone else routine.
Until eventually we loop back around to the beginning and see the end of our allegedly ideal Living family.
There’s a lot that could be said here, frankly. At least, there could have been; the problem with this movie is that it’s so paint by numbers for the Zombie Apocalypse genre that it’s hard to tell where the political statements begin and the genre tropes end. Is this meant to be a critique of dutifully following mainstream, Western Liberal Democractic governments? Of trusting in social institutions?
Or is it just a local version of Dawn of the Dead, going through the motions?
It’s just so darn generic. There’s nothing here, stylistically or thematically, that you haven’t seen before, if you’ve watched enough Zombie films.
But regardless of whether it’s trying to make a Big Statement or just a homegrown Zombie apocalypse movie, the ZRC can safely conclude that the movie is Anti-Zombie. We do not approve.
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