Teenage Gustav (Benjamin Engell) returns from his swim at the lake near to his suburban home where he lives with his parents Pernille (Mille Dinesen) and Dino (Troels Lyby), and his younger sister Maj (Ella Solgaard). But as he approaches the house, he notices some activity in the street: a new family are moving in across the way from him, and he likes the look of their teenage daughter Sonja (Marie Hammer Boda), making plans in his mind to get to know her better. On entering his home, however, things are pretty much the same, getting ordered about by his mother who laments to her husband that she always has to be the bad guy in the domestic situations. The disease outbreak on the news barely merits attention with this going on...
The zombie genre seemingly had ambitions to conjure up examples from every country in the world, and with What We Become it had the first Danish entry. Not that director Bo Mikkelsen, graduating from short subjects, was upfront about what the outbreak was causing, if anything he was very coy, only coming out and admitting what was actually happening in the film's closing stages when unless you had never seen a horror movie before, never mind a zombie one, you would be well ahead of the plot. Some found what was essentially a big tease to be offputting, but as it was about the only aspect that was doing something different then it might not have been as unwelcome as all that.
Although the question then arose, how far did zombie fans want something different when the template for the genre was already set in stone, and had been by George A. Romero's design classic Night of the Living Dead back in the late nineteen-sixties? As the deluge of undead fiction proved, consuming the same thing over and over again was part and parcel of being an aficionado of these efforts, much like the flesh eaters endlessly consumed the bodies of the living to sate their insatiable appetite. So while Mikkelsen's attempt at trying a different approach was admirable, it might not have been greeted with open arms by those who wanted their gore upfront and as plentiful as possible.
Particularly when aside from the substantial delay in admitting, okay, this is a zombie flick, you got me, there wasn't much novelty in What We Become, or Sorgenfri as it was originally known (named after the area of Denmark it was set). Again, that might not have been an issue if Mikkelsen had concocted a plot that was not so intent on pretending it was a low budget outbreak movie like Contagion or, er, Outbreak, with all the conventions you'd expect: the keep calm news reports, the anonymous soldiers in hazmat suits, the abrupt introduction of weaponry, the sense that the public were being kept in the dark when we watching this escalating mayhem are already in the privileged position of being all too aware of the nature of the crisis.
You may have had misgivings about the approach, but What We Become was not the work of rank amateurs, and they managed a certain professional sheen to the proceedings that meant it was never less than diverting. There was even time for romance, as Gustav's Peeping Tom antics blossom into a relationship with Sonja (seeming more through desperate circumstance than any genuine connection), and black humour as Maj's flopsy bunny is drafted in to assist with the food rations when the supplies begin to run out. While there was a lot reticent about actually depicting the apocalypse until there was no getting around it, they had to admit that was going on, when it arrived it was well-handled if underpopulated, though the fact remained this felt a lot like a first instalment in an ongoing series, and not a hugely original one at that. But if it was getting on with what you knew and were happy with, then this offered a quick fix of family breakdowns, anti-authority suspicion and the occasional burst of bloody violence, which for many would be enough. Music by Martin Pedersen.
