What We Become

Director - Bo Mikkelsen (Are You Sleeping)

Starring - Mille Dinesen (Rita), Marie Hammer Boda (The Keeper of Lost Causes), and Troels Lyby (The Killing)

Release Date - 2015

Genre - Horror

Tagline - "Stay home. Lock up. Don't breathe"

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     The world in is no shortage of zombie flicks.  When I was growing up I could rent some of the classics at the local video store but there was not that many new zombie films being released.  Personally, I love zombie movies but from the time I was a kid up until my teenage years there was very few new films available to check out.  Things changed in 2010 when The Walking Dead the television show first aired on AMC and became a pop culture phenomenon.  Now, zombies are everywhere with a couple dozen hitting store shelves almost weekly.  A few days back Scream Factory sent over a press release for the film What We Become.  It looked fun so I reached out to them and they were kind enough to hook me up with a review copy.  Thanks guys!
     The film follows a family in a small community who finds themselves in the middle of a string of unexplained deaths.  After the bodies pile up the military come into the community and set up blockades.  When some of the residents try to flee the military becomes hostile and opens fire.  When more and more people start to die they quickly learn that those that died are infected.  The military starts covering homes in plastic to prevent the spread of the disease but a love torn teenager sneaks out one night to check on his crush across the road and mistakenly opens up a trailer housing the infected dead.  The dead are not returning to life and killing the living forcing the family to fight for their lives against the undead and the military.

     I love zombie flicks.  Aside from slashers, the zombie sub-genre is and always will be one of my favorites.  With that being said, most of the modern zombie movies try to capture that look and feel of The Walking Dead where we have more drama and character's bickering back and forth with one another and not enough zombies.  That is why I tend to lean more towards the zombie comedies and not the more serious zombie flicks.  They are boring and just a rehashing of something I can watch on cable television.  What We Become doesn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to zombies but does offer a smooth ride.  The acting in this one is pretty good.  Once again, this is an international release so we are watching a film with sub-titles so some of the acting is lost in translation but from what you can see and read the cast does a great job.  They go through all the emotions and deliver some solid scenes without over doing it or making it campy.  I love campy performances but the tone for this film is all wrong but they found a good cast to work with the story.  The story for this one is not that original.  In fact, it is not original at all just like my review.  However, that doesn't stop it from being fun.  It offers up some great suspense, decent character development, and a little action.  Sadly, the character development does not transfer well to character likability.  The viewer feels distant from the characters and do not care if they die or not.  The little girls death does weigh hard on the heart strings but that is about it.  We need more likable characters.  Finally, the film does have some deaths and some quick looks at the undead but nothing really stands out to be honest.  We have one zombie that has been disemboweled but that is it.  The rest at just normal people with grey or green skin who are running around.  The deaths we do get are neck bites with a lot of blood but no look at the wounds.  The practical effects we do get are decent at the most but the film completely skips on the kills one associated with zombie flicks.  Overall, What We Become is a fairly entertain zombie film.  It does not offer up anything new or special but still entertains which is all we can hope for with the current state of oversaturation of zombie films.  Check it out.