Oh man, so close! In the horror glut, it’s always exciting when a new twist comes along. We Bury the Dead did the hard part, finding that fresh spin on a zombie movie. It’s just too bad that the premise was too daring for the movie, chickening out of fully committing to the bit. Poor Daisy Ridley just can’t catch a break can she, living the zombie version of The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker all over again.
An experimental weapon accidentally goes off in Tasmania, killing almost all of the population. Disaster relief crews start showing up to help deal with the fallout/bury the victims honorably. People like Ava (Daisy Ridley) and Clay (Brenton Thwaites) go house to house, removing and identifying bodies best the can. Two complications though: 1) Ava’s husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) was on the really bad part of the island during the blast, and 2) not all the bodies, um, stay dead, making this process more of a military operation.
The last great zombie spin was Train to Busan, which used the allegory of zombies only reacting to sounds they hear when they get violent. We Bury the Dead’s zombie concept is deeper, and richer than that. Ava learns not all the dead bodies come alive, only some of them do. And, at first, those zombies are harmless, only becoming aggressive as they remain undead for too long. Zak Hilditch milks this idea for all its worth; how do we know which zombies come alive and which don’t? Why would a zombie grit its teeth and become more aggressive as time goes on? How do the living react to dead vs. undead zombies? Concepts of a life unlived, certainty vs. uncertainty, closure, and purpose driven living are all explored with We Bury the Dead, and left me excited to see this zombie spin come back again in some form.
I just wish the execution was better. As cool as this concept is, these zombies are much more sedate than horror movie audiences expect. The studio was clearly worried that a movie of Daisy Ridley and Brenton Thwaites slowly going across Tasmania cleaning up the wreckage would be too slow and tough of a sit. As such, Zak Hilditch spices up the story in parts to be more exciting. While some of those sequences, like the one with military man Riley (Mark Coles Smith) are hella tense and requisitely creepy, these sequences distract us a bit too much from the more interesting material sitting in We Bury the Dead’s story. That tug of war means the ending doesn’t quite work the way we want it to, instead left wanting more, ready to wake up like the Tasmanian undead devils here, starting to grit our own teeth.
But overall, good effort! I like the brainstorm Zak, Daisy, and the team. I hope this is popular enough that we get to try again, maybe with A24 behind it? Elevate the art to show everyone The Last Jedi was right, er, I mean We Bury the Dead is worth revisiting. Sorry, internal thoughts got away from me there.