Following a catastrophic disaster in Tasmania, its victims appear to have reanimated. Squads of volunteers are enlisted alongside the army to bury the dead, and terminate any of the reanimated corpses.
An American woman, Ava (Daisy Ridley), signs on to volunteer so she can find her husband (Matt Whelan), who was in Tasmania when the cataclysm happened.
The zombie genre has become so ubiquitous in the 21st century (partially thanks to the success of the TV series The Walking Dead), it is starting to become more of a setting than a genre. While the genre has always been durable, hybrids like the romantic comedy Warm Bodies and heist film Army of the Dead show the genre’s true elasticity.
While it features some familiar elements, We Bury The Dead is not a horror film - it barely qualifies as a thriller.
It lacks the sense of momentum, or any real set-pieces.
Instead, it is a quiet, disturbing meditation on grief.
The film is a slow burn for most of the early action.
We follow Ava as she arrives in Australia and joins the burial units.
Most of the living dead Ava encounters are wandering wraiths, who seem to register other humans but make no moves to attack. The undead grind their teeth but do not appear to be flesh-eaters - they are just aggressive flaying out the living.
These initial appearances give Ava hope that her husband - even if he is dead - may have a path back to her.
The film turns into a quest narrative, as Ava’s journey takes her into new environments with new characters who force her to confront her motivations for finding her husband.
The most significant of these figures is a soldier, Riley (Mark Coles Smith), goes from being an obstacle (he threatens to bring her in) to a threat.
His story is an extreme mirror of Ava’s - he has Ava cosplay as his dead wife.
Their dance is intercut with Ava’s dance with her husband. As Riley bends down to listen to Ava’s belly, there is a flashback to her husband mirroring the same action.
This sequence turns into a variation on the Bluebeard story, as Ava discovers Riley’s wife’s corpse in a made-up shrine in a bedroom.
Riley advises her that the dead who come back have “unfinished business” - he believes their unborn child can still be born.
That theme of unfinished business is central to Ava’s journey.
Unusually quiet and un-rushed, We Bury The Dead lets its story play out with a respect for the viewer’s intelligence - letting a look, or a glimpse of some interesting element (a tattoo) provide clues, rather than spelling everything out.
When Ava’s husband left on his trip, the couple were in a moment of upheaval - an unstated heartbreak that intertwines both our and the character’s need for understanding and resolution.
Daisy Ridley is fine in the lead, but this film exemplifies an issue I have with a lot of movies that try to aim for the US market - actors affecting American accents.
She stands out when everyone else is speaking with their own accents.
Brenton Thwaites is a welcome injection of energy as the more mercenary worker Ava is paired with.
More interesting than fully involving, We Bury The Dead feels like a dry run for something truly spectacular.
The human story is more interesting than the undead trappings, and it almost feels like it would work better with a slightly less tidy close (having an end title song also feels like a strange choice).
Still, worth a look.
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