The Last Marriage review: Marital discord in the midst of a zombie apocalypse

Life isn’t so much about the big moments as it is about the ordinary, everyday stuff. But what happens when there is a zombie apocalypse and the brain-sucking undead are literally at your door? Will one put aside one’s grievances and tackle the literally life-threatening menace at hand?

Not quite, it turns out. Directed by Johan Tappert and Gustav Egerstedt, the Swedish film The Last Marriage is a hilarious take on how everyday marital discord and niggling quibbles will survive practically anything.

Marie and Janne are a regular couple in an irregular situation. With the undead taking over, they are confined to their house, doing their chores, playing video games and following the same routine day in and day out. Bored with their mundane lives, the wife expresses her wish for some excitement in their sex life. 

Predictably, the husband takes his own sweet time to get around to doing his chores. In normal times, that’s annoying. In a zombie apocalypse, it’s literally a matter of life and death. The wife decides that she has had enough and wishes to find someone else out there and not be chained to an eternity of a sluggish husband and a boring sex life.

The film is hilarious with the immaculately crafted zombies (kudos to the make-up artiste) being reduced to annoying albeit lethal pests hovering around in the face of the apparently larger problems that the couple is having. They even have their zombie daughter chained like a dog and try to be good parents to her!

The absurd and funny film keeps us hooked with its inventive premise. The screenwriter, Johan Holmström, brings in the zombie rampage at the appropriate moment, which is a catalyst for some reflection and deep thinking.

The musical score, too, deserves a special mention in this finely crafted film. One can’t help but think that in pandemic times, the virus became the veritable zombies, confining people to their homes and taking countless relationships to their breaking point.

The film won the Silver Méliès for Best Short Film at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival and is being screened at the Palm Springs International ShortFest, which is on from 22–28 June 2021.