What We Become - UK DVD review

The residents of an idyllic Danish neighbourhood find their world turned upside down when they are forced to deal with government soldiers on one side and hordes of flesh eating zombies on the other in director Bo Mikkelsen’s debut feature WHAT WE BECOME, which is out now on UK DVD.

Set in an otherwise ordinary suburb of Copenhagen, when news reports of an outbreak of some sort of flu virus start coming in, the residents initially think nothing of it. But as the film progresses and emergency vehicles start tearing up the neighbourhood with alarming frequency, you realise something is very wrong indeed.

Then when armed police in gas masks and military in hazmat suits finally march down their idyllic quarter in the middle of the night and start sealing people into their homes, it becomes obvious this is no ordinary flu outbreak and there is definitively something rotten in the state of Denmark (pardon the pun).

Yes, it seems unbeknown to our lead characters, there’s a zombie apocalypse in full swing and the military are aggressively dealing with any potential infected. But despite assurances that “everything will be alright” provided they comply, when soldiers are seen going house to house and dumping bodies in lorries they are otherwise unconvinced.

When the military suddenly pull out unannounced in rather a hurry, the residents initially think the pandemic is over. However, as they are soon to discover, their problems are only just beginning

For what was obviously a very low budget film and directors first feature I was extremely impressed. The film takes its time to build the tension up slowly, as we see the neighbours going about their daily business, whilst hinting at something very wrong going on in the background, as the presence of the emergency services and finally the military becomes more prevalent as the film goes on.

Filmed in Danish with English subs, to be fair, there’s nothing really here that hasn’t been done before. Indeed, I was reminded a great deal of Series 1 of “Fear the Walking Dead” for the most part, as well as "The Crazies" remake and the 2006 virus film “Right at Your Door”. But it was still a very tense survival thriller, even though the zombies don’t really come into it until the final 20mins or so, and I would heartily recommend checking this out

The film is out now on DVD from Soda pictures and contains a trailer as an extra.

View the trailer on YouTube 

Buy the UK DVD from Amazon.co.uk