Zombies, amIright? Sheesh. Just can’t trust those guys.
“Well, let’s rethink that,” says writer/director Zak Hilditch with his mild horror We Bury the Dead, a film much more about one woman finding post-apocalyptic closure than clawing for survival.
The island of Tasmania hosts about half a million people. In this fictional disaster tale, the United States (yeah, us, sigh, that tracks) detonated a pulse bomb on the island. Within seconds, every living being in the entire 26,410 square mile (roughly the size of West Virginia) land mass ceased to have brain function. Over 99% died on the spot.
Some did not … so the army goes around shooting them.
Ava (Daisy Ridley) is a newlywed whose spouse was alone in a resort hotel (?!) Tasmania when the bomb detonated. She volunteers for clean-up, but is really just there to figure out what happened to hubby Mitch. The powers that be allow her to identify and drag bodies out of houses for public disposal purposes, but this only gets her within 200 miles of where Mitch was supposed to be. Every once in a while, Ava encounters a body that has not died. Are there lights on upstairs? Hard to say. They don’t seem to move much.
Just in case you full sympathetic for these walking vegetables, they look horrible with purple splotches and yellow, lensless eyes. I bet they smell horrible, too, but my theater didn’t come with that feature.
Eventually, Ava partners his bad boy Clay (Brenton Thwaits). It’s difficult to see what he wants out of this deathscape, but he cottons on quite fast to Ava’s suggestion of stealing a motorcycle and cruising to Mitch’s hotel south of Hobart.
And this is where I leave you, for to delve more is to cheat a most enjoyable (if a little intense) experience. Suffice to say, nobody is exactly what they seem, and the longer you stay undead, the more animated you get.
This past Christmas offered the standard array of movie options and yet We Bury the Dead was my favorite viewing experience of the entire holiday season.
No, I’m not going to qualify that. Yes, I did see a lot of holiday films and rewatched several classics. Yes, it’s likely that if I had been seeing Spirited or It’s a Wonderful Life for the very first time, I would have enjoyed that more than We Bury the Dead. So, I suppose I did qualify that. Sue me. I liked this film.
We Bury the Dead is the second 2024 film that might have made my top 10 had it been released in 2024 (The Life of Chuck is the other.) Part of me feels the need to discount these films because I feel like I’ve missed something – if it were that good, Jim, why wasn’t it released in timely fashion? I find this an excellent argument, but ultimately frustrating because it provides little insight. From what I can tell, We Bury the Dead was an insightful horror film with great symmetry. If asked which recent Daisy Ridley movie I’d choose among We Bury the Dead, Young Woman and the Sea, and Cleaner, I’d choose We Bury the Dead ten times out of ten. I don’t know what other people missed in this film, but it was a clear winner for me.
There once was a survivor named Ava
Who surrendered her safety with a waive-a
For her new husband’s path
Got caught in death’s swath
And some corpses now refuse a grave-a
Rated R, 95 Minutes
Director: Zak Hilditch
Writer: Zak Hilditch
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who fear non-zombies more than zombies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Misunderstood zombies
