We Bury the Dead
by Hope Madden
We Bury the Dead is an intriguing title, particularly for a zombie movie. Writer/director Zak Hilditch’s latest mixes familiar with fresh, focused less on scares than on contemplative action.
Daisy Ridley is Ava, a young woman determined to find her husband (Matt Whelan) after a US chemical weapons mishap wipes out every living thing in Tasmania. She volunteers with a group who will find, catalog, and bury the dead. As a Yank, she’s not too welcome, but her ulterior motive is to get to the heart of the catastrophe, to the resort where her husband had gone for a conference. To find him, she’ll have to risk exposure to the smoke, the military, rogue sharp shooters, and the dead who come “back online”.
Ridley has made a series of fascinating choices since being catapulted into merciless Star Wars fandom with her career-making turns as Rey. She has gravitated mainly toward quietly complicated characters in mid-budget independent films, as well as voice work in animation and documentary.
While not every project has been a winner, Ridley’s flexed a range of muscles. From dark, dry, awkward comedy (Sometimes I Think About Dying) to meditative, spooky thriller (The Marsh King’s Daughter) to inspirational, true life-adventure (Young Woman and the Sea), Ridley brings an introspective magnetism to projects. The same can be said for her work in Hilditch’s Tasmanian zombie drama.
Ava develops a frenemy situation with her volunteer partner, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), a bad boy who smokes a lot, shows no respect for the dead, and just might be criminal enough to help Ava get through the restricted areas of the country. Thwaites’s performance is better than the script, but it’s still tough to buy the burgeoning friendship.
A late side story with Riley (Mark Coles Smith) edges the film closer to horror, but Hilditch’s interests lie in drama. The heart of the story has to be the reason Ava risks so much to find Mitch. Much credit goes to Hilditch for some of the surprises he has in store, but he writes himself into a corner he can’t quite escape.
And though he crafts a few truly memorable sequences and injects zombie lore with a few new ideas, he unfortunately leans back on one of the most tiresome and suddenly popular cliches, a choice meant to wrap Ava’s arc up in a tidy bow when dystopia calls for messes.
But Ridley and Thwaites carve a compelling odd couple and Tasmania offers a handful of fascinating new details for the genre.
