Sorgenfri aka
What We
Become (2016)
Modern horror isn’t very good so blindly choosing a film to watch can end up leaving you wishing you were one of the victims in the film.
However taking a chance on a horror film that isn’t of the English language tends to offer more satisfying results.
Like this Danish horror What We Become.
Gustav lives in the neighbourhood of Sorgenfri when a family move directly across the street from his home with daughter Sonja who Gustav becomes smitten with.
Problems arise when an unknown virus spreads throughout the town and heads towards his neighbourhood leading to the area being quarantined by the government with the quarantine enforced by the army.
Gustav however is a teenager and like all good teenagers doesn’t listen, is impulsive and doesn’t think before he acts taking a bad situation not only for his family but also for the entire town and making it so much worse.
Basically he’s an idiot so it is a good thing for him that Sonja is too.
Running at 77 minutes this film has the usual fluff at the start establishing the characters and relationships and all that but quickly pushes that out of the way to focus on how people in the street deal with the quarantine.
What we have here apart from a few instances most of which involve Gustav being a moody teenager around his parents is a family that gets on. I only point that out as it seems every family in films must all have some sort of conflict for forced drama.
I found myself liking all the characters you’re supposed to and for the rest they fitted the plot of the film without grating. There isn’t much gore but what there is is used to good effect and helped by a nice atmosphere created by the tension of the main people.
There are a couple of situations where it seems like the film is trying to show desperate people acting in a way they wouldn’t normally but each time there isn’t any follow up or any repercussions for their actions and I don’t know if this is good because it doesn’t cause the film to slow down too much or bad because it makes you wonder why include these scenes at all.
Moving along at a good pace I really enjoyed Sorgenfri and came away with a satisfied feeling which isn’t something I can’t say too often these days. The best way to describe this film is like a cross between Rec and Night of the Living Dead with some nice touches like the houses in the streets covered in what I can only describe as giant black bin bags.
Thumbs up from me.
