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What We Become

Released May 13, 2016 1h 21m Horror Mystery & Thriller TRAILER for What We Become: Trailer 1 List
78% Tomatometer 9 Reviews 27% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
Members of a family fight for survival when a mysterious plague unleashes flesh-eating zombies in their small town.
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What We Become

Critics Reviews

View All (9) Critics Reviews
Brian Tallerico RogerEbert.com As the film peaks, its derivative, clichd nature falls away and it becomes its own thing. Your enjoyment level will be determined by if you're patient enough with it to get to that point. Rated: 2.5/4 May 13, 2016 Full Review Jordan Hoffman Guardian It's the same low-budget horror flick you've seen many times before, but it's nice to see some local variants on a familiar theme. Rated: 3/5 May 12, 2016 Full Review Noel Murray Los Angeles Times A savvy, sensitive study of suburbanites coping with an encroaching apocalypse. May 12, 2016 Full Review Ezequiel Boetti Otroscines.com A worthy exponent of terror with zombies and gore excesses of Danish origin. [Full review in Spanish] Jan 27, 2017 Full Review Emiliano Basile EscribiendoCine A film that builds a kind of horror that emerges from the bowels of its own society. [Full review in Spanish] Rated: 8/10 Jan 27, 2017 Full Review Maitland McDonagh Film Journal International A worthy addition to the ever-swelling ranks zombie/pandemic fiction. May 11, 2016 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (21) audience reviews
prawnda s it's very well done, but some people might not like that there's very little action, and most of the violence takes place off screen. i think this aspect is tasteful and frugal, and that the limited budget hardly shows at all. it may not be anything to write home about, but it's a solid film. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Audience Member Would have been a fairly good stab at a zombie movie except for the usual trope of idiot child/teenager gets everyone else killed and thereafter you only watch the film in the hope they'll show some recognition or remorse before ideally being killed horribly. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member What a shame. I had hoped for a good Danish horror film, but this did not deliver. It started promising with a great cold opening only to immediately ruin this by having its title screen actually be a try-hard, epilepsy-inducing jump scare. The juxtaposition between these two clips left me confused as to what tone the film was trying to establish. It did not improve when it became apparent that the main character of the film was not the one featured in this opening but was instead going to be a poorly written and poorly acted teenage boy, who (of course?) needs to have his own romance with the neighbor's teenage daughter so that we can have sex scenes with her and show her off as much as possible without leaving PG-territory. One may wonder why they bothered to have a poorly executed teenage romance in a zombie flick, but I guess they had it because they barely got any zombies. The zombies doesn't show up until the last 10 minutes of this 1 hour and 17 minutes-long film, actually. I assume they tried to build tension, but that doesn't work because we already know how zombies generally look like. I actually think it's more likely that they just didn't have a big enough budget for makeup to have zombies throughout. Also, I have a problem with them waiting so long to reveal zombies as I believe you can go about presenting your zombie story in one of two ways: either you start the story already being post the zombie apocalypse or you show the turn in full during the first 5-20 minutes or first act. This film is a miracle: it spends the entirety of it's runtime making its transition opposed to get it out of the way because it needs time for the teenage romance. The reason to why you get the transition to zombie apocalypse done relatively quickly is to show it as a natural disaster that cannot be stopped, as if it's interrupting the plot of the film itself. It may slowly build in the background until it infests the film completely. A film turning into a zombie film is meant to simulate the turn that happens to people becoming zombies. If you go slowly about this as they decided to do you fail at providing immediacy. This is the first problem while the second is that building up to showing zombies throughout the film puts too much emphasis on their presence. In a zombie film, zombies are not supposed to be the main focus of horror: while zombies are predictable and run on instincts, humans in critical situations are completely unpredictable. We know what happens if a zombie gets close to our main characters, but not what will happen if other humans gets close - will they be friendly or hostile? You focus on this relationship to ask how humans would react in stressed conditions. The zombies should function as a spectacle and constant reminder of danger to our characters, but we should be invested in the well-being of our main characters first in order for us to care. Done correctly, you can have your audience hooked whether type of media your zombie story appears as. I would even go as far to say you don't need zombies as movies like It Comes at Night proved to me. However, given the stale acting, the misguided understanding of our care in whether or not the unlikable teenager gets rewarded for his perverted interested in the teenage girl and the ridiculous cliches throughout (just because you are the first Danish zombie film it doesn't give you carte blanche at the buffet), this film failed at engaging me. You are not supposed to root for the death of your characters, as this film had me do. The Japanese proved that it's possible to make a fantastic zombie flick with a low budget with One Cut of the Dead, so it should be possible for Danes as well in time. This film provides nothing new to the table and fails at entertaining as intended. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Audience Member How did this "Movie" get a better rating than World War Z? The taste in movies has gone downhill faster than most Hollywood actor's careers. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Audience Member The film is most certainly not genre defining, but introduces some interesting scenaros in the event our friends and neighbors go zombie as well as a reward for climax for those patient enough to stay for it. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/16/23 Full Review Audience Member It's not a good sign when I forget about a movie I watched entirely. I guess it was because this take on the zombie genre was as generic as it gets and it focuses too much on the slow turning of people and downfall of society under a viral threat than offering any new ideas. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews
What We Become

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis Members of a family fight for survival when a mysterious plague unleashes flesh-eating zombies in their small town.
Director
Bo Mikkelsen
Producer
Sara Namer
Screenwriter
Bo Mikkelsen
Distributor
IFC Films
Production Co
Meta Film
Genre
Horror, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language
Danish
Release Date (Theaters)
May 13, 2016, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Oct 18, 2016
Runtime
1h 21m
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