WE BURY THE DEAD: 3 ½ STARS. “the movie’s take on loss and grieving that sticks.”
SYNOPSIS: In “We Bury the Dead,” a new zombie flick now playing in theatres, Daisy Ridley plays a grieving woman who enters a quarantine zone searching for her missing husband after a catastrophic military disaster turned most of the population of Tasmania into violent zombies.
CAST: Daisy Ridley, Mark Coles Smith and Brenton Thwaites. Directed by Zak Hilditch.
REVIEW: “We Bury the Dead” has some great and gory zombie moments for undead aficionados, but despite the gore, it’s the movie’s take on loss and grieving that sticks.
Set in the near future, the action begins with a botched military experiment in Tasmania that took the lives of thousands of people. When the dead folks start to reanimate the military insists they are slow-moving and therefore harmless. “The odd ones who do come back online are docile,” says a military spokesperson. “You have nothing to fear.”
When Ava (Daisy Ridley) signs up to a body retrieval unit in the quarantined area, she hopes to find her missing husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) who disappeared after reporting to Tasmania for work. Instead, she discovers the military have lied. The zombies are far from harmless. They’re fleet of foot, violent and intent on hunting the living. “You know why only some of them come back?” asks Clay (Brendon Thwaites). “They’re the ones with unfinished business.”
“We Bury the Dead” is more about the living than the (un)dead. The zombies are creepy and make a crunching sound that will certainly keep people with misophonia up at night, but the story is more concerned with its living, breathing characters. That lends an emotional depth to the story we don’t often find in zombie movies.
Ridley brings her action movie chops but plays Ava with great restraint. With a minimum of dialogue, she emphasizes the character’s desperation and devastation. She brings a great deal of humanity to a situation where humanity is in short supply.
“We Bury the Dead” does have the odd scare, but it isn’t exactly a full-on horror film. It’s a slow burn, a movie that takes its time building atmosphere, allowing the tension to take hold. Once it has you in its grip, it’s more concerned with making you think about the loss of a loved one, and words left unsaid, than the raising the hairs on the back of your neck.
Comments are closed.
