Movie Review: Daisy Ridley Braves an Underwhelming Zombie Apocalypse "We Bury The Dead "

4/12 ForReel Score | 2/5 Stars

There’s far more reverence for bodies in We Bury The Dead than one might expect from a zombie flick. As the film opens, we learn that Tasmania was devastated by an American experimental weapon. Anyone in the immediate area is dead, so corpses litter the streets. We follow Ava (Daisy Ridley) as she joins a crew of people tasked with recovering, identifying and laying to rest those who were lost. Among them is her husband, who was killed while on a business retreat in a resort that Ava has not yet been able to access. She hopes to use this job as a vehicle to finally find him and get some sense of closure. It would be a heartbreaking task even if some of the bodies weren’t quite ready to stay dead. In the canon of zombie stories, We Bury The Dead veers much closer to The Last of Us than Dawn of the Dead. We’re on an intimate journey with one character as she has a couple of episodic encounters with people who represent the collective despair the world has fallen into. The zombies are present but they’re more a tragic inconvenience that must be grieved and dealt with than blown to smithereens in a blaze of glory. An unplugged indie drama about grief with a bit of carnage to drive home the dread. Sadly, I’m a bit tired of this shade of genre movie, and none of the emotional beats in We Bury The Dead hold a candle to the heartbreaking apocalyptic family saga that Danny Boyle began in 28 Years Later earlier this year. 

I wish this could be the movie that finally pulls Daisy Ridley out of her post Star Wars rut. While her three co-stars regularly appear in blockbusters and awards contenders, she’s been trapped in a rut of dirt cheap indies that are largely unseen. I suspect that this will join the pile. She’s given a fairly standard role here. An aggrieved, single minded woman whose pursuit of her husband’s body is the only way that she can wrap her mind around what is happening. Even though writer/director Zak Hilditch’s screenplay never gives her any truly compelling scenarios to fuel that journey with, Ridley is easy to follow, if unremarkable. 

Ava’s journey primarily centers on her interactions with two men. Clay (Brenton Thwaites) is a fellow crew member with a more free spirit, a bit of a drifter. It has been a while since we’ve seen Thwaites and sadly, I quickly remembered why. He brings nothing to the table beyond a hairdo and beard that Aaron Taylor-Johnson would’ve worn better. Then, there’s Riley (Mark Coles Smith), a solider who smuggles Ava some of the way before revealing his strange backstory and true colors. We see the turn coming from a mile away. Smith is creepy enough with the material he’s given, but it is unfortunate to see the film’s only Aboriginal character reduced to a traumatic obstacle for a white woman trapped in the wasteland. 

As was the case in 1922, Zak Hilditch has a somewhat striking eye. When our corpse collectors are pulling the dead out of the wreckage of this horrific attack, the images feel grounded enough to be pulled from news footage. I wish that this eerie occupation could’ve remained the focus of the story, as it is the only truly unique angle that We Bury The Dead brings to the zombie genre. Otherwise, this is a drab and stale re-exploration of the plight of a zombie apocalypse. Had it provided more emotional heft or a couple of spectacular showdowns with the zombies, it wouldn’t have mattered, but it just never stands out. The movie itself, is a reanimation of better films that are long gone.