What We Become

A family fights for survival when a mysterious plague unleashes flesh-eating zombies and an authoritarian government response on their small neighborhood.

Zombie apocalypse stories can almost seem a little quaint now that we’ve passed through the fire of when they were absolutely dominating all of pop culture, and all right before we found ourselves mired in a real-life on-going global pandemic. Of course, the fact we’re still stuck in that same on-going global pandemic does allow us to say with some confidence that, despite the outlandish premise, most of these zombie apocalypse stories actually give too much of a benefit of the doubt to most people, at least when it comes to how they would actually react if they were ever to find themselves suddenly beset on all sides by a ravenous and unrelenting tide of the undead. Because it turns out, the majority of modern day society is made up of the kind of guy who hides the fact that he's been bitten from the rest of the people hunkered down within the safe haven, until he then turns into a zombie himself, which then wrecks the safe haven, and results in several people dying.

This is why we're still stuck in the aforementioned on-going global penademic...

After all, if you want to survive a zombie apocalypse, you need to have a strong sense of community and a willingness to help others, and if there’s one thing that COVID has show us beyond a shadow of a doubt… not only would most people lie about their infection status in order to save themselves, even if it screwed over the rest of the community, a good portion of society's initial reactions would be… after declaring that the hordes of zombies on TV are either Democrat-driven lies, or a bunch of socialist “urban” anTEEfa rioters, they'd decide that if there really were an infection going around, it's just a simple cold, or a summer flu. Either way, it's nothing a simple mixture of prayer, bleach, and colloidal silver can't cure, which is good news, because you can buy that stuff from several trustworthy sources, like Joel Osteen, Joe Rogan, or Trump. Then they would sagely explain that the reason the “libtards” don’t like to hear this truth, is because they hate the freedoms of real Americans, and so that's why, despite what the "lame-stream" media might say on the TV, there’s no need to cancel school, or not go to work, or to not hold any kind of gathering where infections might spread quickly, especially if doing so would be an inconvenience in any way, because you gotta think about the economy, buddy, and the small business owner too. Besides, this is America, and Americans have a sacred right to travel, not just from God, but that's in the Constitution. Either way, you can’t live your life in fear, especially if it means that you're going to be missing an appointment at the salon, or going to your work Happy Hour at the Applebees for dollar margarita nite, or to the next Morgan Wallen concert. C'mon now... let's be serious here. You expect us to stay home? To be a good person? To consider the folks who have disabilities or immunosuppressed conditions who are now barred from living their lives simply because of the selfish and entitled refusal of some to consider others for one single fucking minute? You expect us to participate for the benefit of society, to be a good citizen, to maybe do our small part to help curb the spread of infection simply by adding a few minor and temporary mitigation efforts to our daily routine? Fuuuuuck that, and fuck you too, you commie pinkos! Yee-haw! (chugs an MGD and starts kind of singing the few words to the National Anthem that they know)

We know that this is what would happen in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, because this is what happened during COVID, and after that, well… then they'd become everyone else's problem, either when they inevitably get infected, or when they realize at the 11th hour that they were wrong and decide that they're entitled to our safe haven, because we didn't warn them strongly enough, so really it's our fault when they wreck our walls trying to get in, dooming us all to a new wave of infection and possibly death.

And thats how the zombies win.

Because the zombies always win eventually, not only do they simply have the numbers, but they're all mindlessly focused on one thing... the selfish satisfaction of their own needs.

Anyway, What We Become is a Danish zombie film. It clocks in at a tight 81 minutes, and focuses on a family whose nice middle class lives are irrevocably interrupted on the day they find themselves stuck home, trapped in the middle of an outbreak of the walking dead. The film was originally released around 2015, five years before COVID, and it’s… funny...? sad...? Cassandrian, maybe...? seeing how this film parrots the early days of COVID.

So...

The family's day starts out nice and normal enough. The news is vaguely disconcerting maybe, there's something about a virus, but there’s no time for that, as there’s a local street fair happening. They all go, and boy, oh boy, is it fun. Sure, a few random people are vomiting, and maybe some of the old people are dropping dead too, but hey, they're old, right… old people die all the time.

Besides, there’s family fun to be had!

But soon enough, more strange things begin to happen. Dead bodies are missing, and the police and the ambulances are too busy to stop at a fatal accident. There’s strange screams from the woods. The news is getting worse too. Quarantine zones are being announced with no real explanation as to why, and citizens are being advised to not go to hospitals in case of illness, but to call a hotline instead.

Then the air raid sirens go off, and the soldiers show up, and they're all ordered to stay in their homes as martial law is declared.

Stuck in lockdown, Dad suggests that they all focus on the positive aspects, and when he's asked what those are, he says “We’ll spend more time together” with all the enthusiasm of an acknowledgement an upcoming root canal.

Things pretty much go down hill from there. People are shown watching TV as it explains how to properly wash your hands, and then nervously moving away from one another when someone coughs unexpectedly. Families and neighbors turn on each other. Some try to flee, but are turned back, and the ones who try to power through are shot down by the soldiers in gas masks patrolling the streets. Officials are seen using firehouses to spray down public areas with sanitizer, and then they cover the houses in heavy quarantine tarps, blocking off everyone from seeing not just what is happening around them, but the sun too. Soon enough, the internet is down and they’re all using candles in the dim caves of their living rooms. Through the gaps in the tarps, they can see hooded people being led away in collars, and they can hear screams of rage and wild thumping from the backs of passing semi trucks. They see soldiers breaching houses, and hear gunfire coming from within. Front-end Loaders are glimpsed dumping tangled piles of dead bodies into waiting dumpsters. Also, a few of their neighbors are quietly roaming the streets at night, unresponsive and slack-faced, these former friends will sometimes pound at their doors, moaning.

All of this prompts the question: “Who’s worse… man, or The Man?”

When the family’s dipshit teenage son--a young man desperate for news of the neighbor girl whose boobs he‘d really like to touch--decides one night to sneak out of the family home, he opens the backs of a bunch of parked semis, thinking he’s releasing captured political prisoners...

And thus, we get our answer.

After that, there's only option left if they want to survive, and that's for the family and their neighbors to band together and fight their way out of the neighborhood.

Looming over all of this is the best lesson one can glean from watching The Handmaid’s Tale: Recognize the warning signs when they appear, and be ready to run when they do, because if you stay too long, you’re fucked. A lesson that could become very relevant in all our lives very soon...

Anyway...

What We Become isn't bad, not really. It's fine. It's decent. At 81 minutes, it's pretty hard to feel like a waste of time, so yeah, it's fine. Of course, there was one thing that I didn't like, and that's that this film does that thing where it opens with a scene showing a character in a really bad and blood-covered way, and then jumps back in time to start the story from the beginning, and I don’t know why so many horror films do this, because it kind of sucks. I don’t understand the point. I watch a lot of movies, so I generally know how these things are going to end, so I don’t care about spoilers or anything like that, but I don't get why filmmakers do this. What purpose does this serve, in a narrative sense? What does starting right before the end, then smash-cutting to your titles, and then jumping back and starting at the story’s beginning bring to the table, except a cheap jump scare early on maybe?

I don't get what the value is.

Because in my experience, when a filmmaker does this, you either don’t recognize the character from the opening when you’re then re-introduced to their non-blood-covered version after the opening credits, at least not until the film is closer to the end later on, when the character is in the bad situation again, which causes you to remember the opening, and that reminder knocks you out of the film.

OR... you forget about the blood-covered opening altogether while watching the film, at least until the film reaches the same point in the story again, which is when you then remember it, and once again, it knocks you out the film. Oh yeah... that one part we've already seen is about to happen...

What’s the upside here?

What really makes this all so strange is that, at the one hour mark, as the family starts looking for a way out of quarantine, and begin to realize the truth of what’s waiting out there for them, the film kicks into high gear. It becomes fun. It’s tense. It’s gory. It shows that the whole film could've been a good time, if not for the poor narrative decisions on the part of the filmmakers, because otherwise, the first hour is mostly a lot of family arguments that slowly build up to a sudden blurt of action, and when you're talking about an 81 minute long film, that’s not a good balance.

In the end, What We Become is pretty basic when it comes to a lot of European genre films in geneal, at least in my experience, which is that a lot of it often feels five-ish years behind its American cousins, sincerely and unironically working with twists and tropes that all feel past-date, at least as far as pop culture is concerned. And this film is no different, as a lot of the typical zombie film stuff happens here, all in the usual order, only a little bit slower than usual, and a lot less blood than a most zombie films, and honestly, a lot less zombies than most zombie films too.

I did like the scene where the family eats the youngest daughter’s rabbit in their stew, because they’re running low on supplies, all while assuring the girl that her rabbit must’ve just escaped. This is something the family does a lot, they lie to the little girl about what's going on, brazenly, and in a tone that seems to indicate that they are not only doing this because she's young, but because they consider her to be stupid. I don't think that's the intent, but it sure feels like that. They obviously think they’re protecting the little girl from harsh realities when they do this. I get that. But I did love how this soft-touch parenting trick is the thing that ultimately leads to their undoing, which I guess means that the lesson here is to always be brutally honest with your children.

“What happened to our dog?”

“He’s dead.”

“Why did they have to die?”

“Because God is a monster.”

“Is that why we don’t we celebrate Christmas?”

“No, we don’t celebrate Christmas because it’s a lie made up out of a cobbled-together mish-mash of pagan iconography that was stolen and co-opted by hordes of invading Christian colonizers, after they slaughtered the indigenous population and erased their culture and religion in an effort to replace it with their own, all of which was then lashed into the palatable and enticing earworm of a mythology by opportunistic Department store owners in order to get you to buy things, and for no other reason then to give a bit of a boost to their profits at the end of the year.”

“Is that why don’t we ever see Aunt Linda and Uncle Jim at Christmas anymore?“

“No, we don’t see them because they’re fascist scumbags, and we’re too good for them. Never forget, kid… ten people and one Nazi sitting at a table and having a meal together is called eleven Nazis having lunch.”

(Child nods in sad understanding.)

And scene! That’s how you parent, America!

Anyway, not bad, but not good, kind of fun for what it is... kind of... the simple truth here is that there’s nothing new in this film, even when you acknowledge that this film is nearly 10 years old. An additional truth is that the majority of what happens in this film was done better over a decade prior to its release in just the opening ten minutes of the James Gunn written and Zack Snyder directed 2004 re-imagining of Dawn of the Dead.

That's just a simple fact.

But then, that’s true of most of the genre.