Studio:   Vertical
Director: Zak Hilditch
Writer:   Zak Hilditch
Producer: Kelvin Munro, Grant Sputore, Ross M. Dinerstein, Joshua Harris, Mark Fasano
Stars:    Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, Mark Coles Smith

Review Score:

Summary:

Following a catastrophic event that turns part of Tasmania into a zombie-infected wasteland, a desperate woman partners with a resourceful stranger to search for her missing husband.

Synopsis:

Following the American military’s accidental detonation of an experimental weapon, 500,000 people are killed in the southern part of Tasmania. Although the Australian military is baffled as to why, some of the dead reanimate as semi-sentient zombies.

Hoping to find her estranged husband Mitch, who was at a Tasmanian resort at the time of the catastrophe, American masseuse Ava joins a detail assigned to retrieve bodies in the affected area. After her first partner is unable to continue with the task, Ava teams up with a contractor named Clay to bury corpses and alert soldiers to the presence of any zombies. During an evening spent drinking to unwind, Ava expresses her belief that there are still signs of life in the infected.

While searching a junkyard, Clay finds a motorcycle he is anxious to ride. Ava makes a deal with Clay to sneak away from their military monitors so he can ride the motorcycle while also taking her into the restricted zone to look for Mitch.

Deep into the restricted zone, a lone soldier named Riley rescues Ava and Clay from a zombie attack. Ava explains she entered the area to search for her missing husband. Claiming he needs to detain them because they disobeyed their directive, Riley locks Ava in a room and takes Clay somewhere else.

When he returns, Riley tells Ava that Clay supposedly slipped away. Seemingly sympathizing with her situation, Riley oddly offers to personally escort Ava on her search for Mitch, although he warns that she may find her husband infected.

Claiming they need to make a stop first, Riley takes Ava to a remote bed and breakfast. There, Riley mourns the death of his pregnant wife Katie. He also explains his theory that victims who come back to life are people with unfinished business.

Fearful of the soldier’s strange demeanor, Ava agrees to dress like Riley’s wife as part of a bargain to release her. While dancing together so Riley can pretend to be with Katie once more, Ava remembers dancing with Mitch during a happier time in their marriage when they were trying to have children. The moment ends abruptly after Riley notices Ava didn’t replace her wedding ring with Katie’s ring like she was instructed.

Riley demands to restart the fantasy. As Riley’s insistence turns to aggression, Ava strikes him in his head to get away. Ava locks herself in a room where she finds Riley’s bizarre shrine to his wife, whose pregnant body lies on a bed. Through the door, Riley tells Ava the baby inside Katie is alive.

Ava sneaks outside through a window and hides in a barn where she finds imprisoned infected that Riley had been testing on to determine how they function. When Riley confronts her, Ava exploits his delusion by impersonating Katie so she can get close to him. Once his guard is down and he becomes aggressive again, Ava stabs Riley in his throat, killing him. As she drives away, Ava sees zombie Katie cradling her pregnant belly.

Upon hitting a roadblock, Ava continues her journey on foot. Along the way, Ava encounters a docile zombie whom she helps bury his loved one. She then kills the zombie out of mercy and buries him alongside the other body.

When she finally makes it to the resort, Ava discovers Mitch dead in a room where he had been having an affair with another woman. Having escaped Riley’s trap, Clay joins Ava.

While telling Clay about problems in her marriage, Ava admits she had an affair, which is what spurred Mitch to take time for himself in Tasmania. Ava adds that she thought if she could find Mitch, she could repair their relationship, although she now realizes she would never be able to. Clay sympathizes by revealing his own wife and daughter want nothing to do with him, so he joined the body retrieval detail because he thought looking like a hero might win them back.

Ava and Clay get drunk, swim together, and fend off another zombie attack. Waking up in the same bed with Clay the next morning, Ava removes her wedding ring and places it on a nightstand in Mitch’s room. Clay helps Ava dispose of Mitch’s corpse by setting fire to a small boat and sending it to sea.

Driving back the way they came, Ava reflects on what Riley said about “unfinished business” when she sees Katie, no longer pregnant, standing in the road as though beckoning to her. Nearby, Ava finds the healthy baby that Katie just birthed. Ava cradles the child with Clay looking over her shoulder.

Review:

The PR people who cooked up “We Bury the Dead’s” press release either didn’t see the movie they were marketing or didn’t quite grasp its contemplative contents. Choosing to fudge the facts as a means of misleading horror-hungry viewers, the official synopsis starts: “After a catastrophic military disaster, the dead don’t just rise – they hunt.” The summary ends by adding: “But when Ava (Daisy Ridley) enters a quarantine zone searching for her missing husband, she uncovers the horrifying truth: the undead are growing more violent, more relentless, and more dangerous with every passing hour.”

This makes it sound like the Australian-made film goes hot and heavy with post-apocalyptic action when nothing could be further from the truth. In actuality, “We Bury the Dead” is quieter, calmer, and more compact than any false promise of monster-intensive mayhem implies. Nevertheless, combining its smaller scope with common cliches means the movie has just as hard of a time leaving a lasting mark in the zombie subgenre as any more fright-filled feature focused on bombastic spectacle.

“We Bury the Dead” packs typical tropes into just three people. Hoping to find her husband amid the devastation accidentally caused by an experimental American weapon, Ava ignores the danger posed by reanimated corpses to brave southern Tasmania as part of a body retrieval crew. Partnering with her on part of her journey is Clay, a chain-smoking, PBR-drinking handyman decked out like a working-class Eddie Vedder circa 1992, ultimately exhibiting compassionate sympathy along a loose redemption arc of his own. Filling the function of what passes for a villain, Riley completes the triad as a rogue soldier who has been cracked in the head since the death of his pregnant wife during the catastrophe.

Highlighting how much the movie homes in on only these three, other appearances belong to mere stragglers and brief drive-bys not important enough to even earn proper names. End credits identify everyone else as “Woman on Plane,” “Camper Van Dad,” “Truck Driver,” “Vomiting Hipster,” and so on.

Those end credits hit at the 88-minute mark, reducing the runtime to such a small space that Ava, Clay, and Riley end up with only cursory characterizations. “We Bury the Dead” strives to be an exploratory character study more than anything, so anyone lured in by the epic intensity promoted by the press release will soon discover little of the sort. Few and far between undead attacks usually involve a single infected. One zombie literally drags a foot that’s been severed, which is the extent of creativity as far as basic creature designs go. Instead of dread, drama takes center stage in what is really a somber reflection on the search for closure amid uncertainty, particularly regarding regret and the death of a loved one.

Premiering at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2024, playing more festivals and releasing in theaters in 2025, then finally hitting home video in 2026, “We Bury the Dead” doesn’t have enough meat on its bleached bones to land on a list of top ten zombie films for any of those years. Talking purely in technical terms, the filmmaking is fine. Scenes are lit well. The camera stays steady when necessary. Edits hit on the right narrative notes. Performances are also okay, even if they are embodying thinly written personas with simplistic motivations.

At issue is that, with over 25 years having already passed in the 21st century, the zombie subgenre has long been tight on remaining room to continue accommodating underwhelming efforts, especially thematically redundant ones making minimal use of their living dead backdrops. When the setting is employed here, it’s purely for pedestrian purposes that thriller fans have seen a thousand times. Singular-minded military men out for their own interests. Heart-of-gold heroes balancing despair and desperation. Someone insisting they can get through to an infected family member, never mind that they’re now a zombie.

The press release seemingly touts an ambitious adventure “We Bury the Dead” very much is not. Though that alternative may be unoriginal too, watching a gooey skeleton bite into human flesh for the millionth moment still sounds like a more engaging experience than shambling through “We Bury the Dead’s” slim story of low stakes, low energy, and a low return on investing in another zombie movie indistinguishable from countless others.

Review Score: 45