Continuing our build up to All Hallows’ Eve and following hot on the heels of yesterday’s short horror La Cruz (The Cross), Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without a zombie film to sink your teeth into. Written and directed by Twitch contributor Omar Hauksson, Undying Love is the tale of a lone survivor, fighting for his life in a world overrun by the living dead. Equipped with his trusted baseball bat and a selection of protective clothing, our protagonist goes about his daily routine of searching for food with ruthless efficiency.

Life is all about survival in this city that seems to have only one pulse, his own, until he meets a stranger in trouble and he must intervene.

Like Cargo, Rest, I Love Sarah Jane and the rest of our favourite zombies shorts here on Short of the Week, Undying Love wins us over by injecting a little soul into its apocalyptic narrative. Essentially a story of unconditional love, Hauksson’s film spends as much time pulling on the heartstrings, as pulling intestines out of its zombie prey. Generally sidestepping on-screen gore throughout its 11-minute duration (a few baseball bats to zombie heads and the odd devouring of a separated leg is about as violent as it gets), Undying Love is as much about surviving without your loved ones, as it is about existing in a world full of demons.

Pulling in favours from some of his fellow Icelanders, Hauksson borrowed a corpse from the production of Baltasar Kormaku’s Jar City, convinced Sigur Ros’ Orri Dyrason to compose a score and even got one of his homeland’s biggest actors, Olafur Darri, to play one of the zombie horde in his impressive short. Not content on riding the shirttails of his famous friends involved in the project, Hauksson’s debut into the short film arena mixes impressive production values with a compelling narrative that cleverly plays on the tropes of the zombie movie. Having successfully toured festivals all over the globe since it was completed back in 2011, Undying Love hits the internet just in time for our yearly celebration of remembering the dead.