Review – WHAT WE BECOME (2015)

I swear, every time I turn around there’s a new zombie film on Netflix. Zombie film, zombie film, zombie film – I swear, there are more zombie films that people lying buried in cemeteries! Sure, some are good, but the bulk of them were made to cash-in on the success of The Walking Dead. A recent addition on Netflix is the first zombie flick from Denmark: Bo Mikkelsen’s What We Become. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXv4EDVmYF0

Gustav (Benjamin Engell) is an ordinary teen living an ordinary suburban life – until a strange virus cases his house and neighborhood to be quarantined. Convinced there is something else up, he sneaks out of the house one night and accidentally releases a zombie horde. With the zombies running amok, Gustav and his family must make a stand against the living dead – unless they wanna become zombie food.

Blah, blah, blah, pish and shite. Given What We Become is from Denmark, I expected something more than your run-of-the-mill zombie fest. Unfortunately, it doesn’t aspire to much more than your run-of-the-mill zombie fest. The same tropes and scares that infest American zombie cinema prove they are contagious as they pop in What We Become as well. Every death and scare can be seen coming a mile away, effectively removing all tension therein. They may as well just write “Survivor” or “Zombie Fodder” on the backs of each of the characters.

To the film’s credit, it does try and deal with themes like denial of death, parenting, familial disconnect and the rule of authority. Gustav’s mom, Pernille (Mille Dinesen) denies the death of a neighbor to her daughter, showing that suburban unease of reality isn’t just an American phenomenon. Gustav’s parents are also at odds with how to raise children: Pernille is a control freak while Dino (Troels Lyby) is lackadaisical about pretty much everything (though he does show some common sense and selfishness when it comes to the nitty-gritty). The family, forced to stay in their home, attempts to bond but don’t really know how. Finally, the movie reveals its conservative pretenses in the releasing of the zombie horde. Had Gustav just listened to the authorities, disaster could have been averted.

However, it doesn’t really give us interesting characters. Each one is a cardboard cutout of a stereotype; none of them rise up to become particularly memorable. And that is where What We Become fails as a whole: to be memorable. Minutes after watching it the film began vanishing from my mind. Who lived? Who died? What happened? Who cares? This isn’t to say What We Become is a bad film, just completely forgettable.

Final Thoughts:

While What We Becomes attempts to deal with some heavy themes, it does so at the expense of memorability. Forgettable characters and predictable scares are the rule here. What We Become won’t piss you off or put you to sleep, but it won’t blast you out of your seat either. In other words, watch it or don’t watch it. It’ll make no difference in your life.