Year: 2016
Runtime: 85 min
Language: Danish
Director: Bo Mikkelsen
A seemingly peaceful summer in a suburban town is shattered when a devastating plague begins to spread. As the death toll rises and the government imposes a strict lockdown, the Johansson family finds themselves trapped and struggling to survive. They soon realize the danger isn't just the illness itself, but the escalating desperation and the increasingly drastic measures people take in a fight for survival.
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Read the complete plot breakdown of What We Become (2016), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
A family of four—Dino, his wife Pernille, and their two children, the young Maj and teenager Gustav—are enjoying a peaceful summer in the picturesque Sorgenfri, Denmark. Life seems blissful until the arrival of a new neighbor, Sonja, who captures Gustav’s attention. While Pernille showers affection on Maj, who is deeply enamored with her pet rabbit Ninus, a nearby picnic takes a dark turn. Here, a neighbor named Casper tries to convince Dino to accompany him on a hunting trip, but Dino refuses the temptation. Tension rises when a little boy at the picnic is seen throwing up, hinting at a lurking illness. Soon after, an elderly woman bursts in, distraught over her husband’s mysterious disappearance.
As the days unfold, their idyllic life shatters with the onset of a deadly virus that transforms its victims into ravenous killing machines. Despite the growing danger, Dino reassures his children that everything is fine. The military steps in, enforcing a quarantine that keeps the families isolated and supplies limited, all while power outages create additional fears. As reports indicate that the research into the virus has yielded no results, panic ensues.
One night, neighbors are mysteriously taken from their homes by the military, supposedly for their safety. Driven by curiosity, Gustav sneaks out to check on Sonja and discovers her mother injured. When he investigates the “safe space,” he finds it filled with the infected, brutally shot by the military. In his attempt to liberate them, Gustav inadvertently unleashes a horde of zombies, leading to the military’s retreat and leaving the remaining residents to fend for themselves. Against Pernille’s objections, Gustav insists on taking in Sonja and her ailing mother.
As the zombie invasion escalates, Casper’s partner Anna makes a daring escape from their home. Casper and Dino prepare for a siege while the family faces their own horrors, including the unsettling absence of Ninus. The atmosphere of dread thickens when Maj asks about her beloved rabbit during breakfast, and though her father tries to comfort her, hints suggest that the meat in their stew might be Ninus. With monsters roaming outside, their safety is further threatened when Gustav’s tendency to peek attracts deadly attention.
Amidst the turmoil, Anna returns, haunted by her experiences. Tensions flare when Sonja and Gustav share a fleeting moment of intimacy, only to discover that Sonja’s mother’s condition has worsened. Gradually, Sonja comes to the horrifying realization that her mother is in rigor mortis.
Dino and Casper attempt to scout their desolate surroundings but are met with aggression from the military. In a shocking twist, they run into a woman looking for her missing partner, only to find themselves in dire circumstances with a Zombie ambush. The chaos continues as Maj ventures out to find Ninus, confronting the neighbor whose husband went missing. In a tragic turn, Maj is bitten, and despite her family’s desperate attempt to save her, the sound of a gunshot alerts the zombies.
Now cornered, the family strives to fortify their home, only to return to find that Anna has succumbed to the infection, and chaos boils over. As Dino faces the grim reality of having to kill his daughter Maj before she becomes a zombie, the scene spirals into a gut-wrenching climax as Pernille refuses to let go, leading to a horrific confrontation that seals their fates.
Gustav and Sonja barricade themselves in a room, finally confronting Sonja’s reborn mother. Using fireworks as a diversion, the pair attempts to navigate through the chaos, barely escaping into the forest as the remnants of their world collapse around them.
The camera pulls back, revealing the smoke rising from their town, accompanied by the piercing sound of an air raid siren and the ominous whistling of an impending bomb. As tension builds, the screen fades to black, flashing the words “WHAT WE BECOME” while the end credits roll, leaving the audience to grapple with the haunting aftermath.
Last Updated: November 08, 2024 at 02:00
Discover curated groups of movies connected by mood, themes, and story style. Browse collections built around emotion, atmosphere, and narrative focus to easily find films that match what you feel like watching right now.
Families forced into lockdown as a deadly contagion tears society apart.If you liked the tense, trapped feeling of What We Become, explore more movies about families struggling to survive a deadly plague under strict lockdown. These similar thriller and horror stories feature claustrophobic settings, societal collapse, and the moral dilemmas of survival.
Stories in this thread typically begin with a sense of normalcy that is violently shattered by a fast-spreading contagion. The protagonists are quickly confined to their homes or a small area under oppressive military or government control, forcing them to confront threats from both the infected outside and the panicked, desperate people trapped with them.
These movies are grouped by their shared focus on the intimate, terrifying experience of a family unit being besieged by a biological threat. They share a high-intensity, tense tone, a variable pacing that builds from slow dread to chaotic action, and a heavy emotional weight centered on survival and loss.
Orderly communities descend into violence and desperation when catastrophe strikes.Fans of What We Become who enjoyed watching a quiet neighborhood descend into chaos will find more movies like it here. These stories explore the loss of innocence and moral collapse in suburban settings during apocalyptic events, focusing on tense survival and grim realities.
The narrative pattern follows the rapid de-evolution of a familiar, safe community into a lawless battlefield. The conflict often shifts from an external threat (like a virus) to the internal threat posed by former friends and neighbors. The journey is one of losing innocence and facing the bleak necessity of hard, often morally ambiguous, choices to protect one's family.
These films are united by their specific setting and theme: the destruction of the idyllic suburban dream. They share a bleak ending feel, a heavy emotional weight dealing with trauma, and a tone that is tense and grim, focusing on the psychological impact of watching your world turn savage.
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