Movie Review – We Bury the Dead

After an American bomb is accidentally set off on the coast of Tasmania, the shockwave kills every person on their island by ending all brain function. Ava’s husband was one of those people, so she travels to Tasmania to find his body. The problem is some of those who died come back to life. Her adventure across the island is populated by two men who are grieving their own relationships and may not have the best intentions.

Daisy Ridley puts everything she has into her character’s grief and survival. Her performance is one of the reasons why I like this movie.

The other reason is that this film takes the zombie trope and does something different with it. Instead of unleashing violent walking dead upon humanity, the film sees them as something closer to human. Some of them still have some of their humanity, something that the protagonist notices even as military hastily put bullets in their brains.

A lot of zombie films use the humans-are-the-real-monsters trope to tell their stories, but this one instead uses grief as the monster. Our need for closure in the wake of heartbreak can make us do unimaginable things – like asking a woman to pretend to be your dead wife so you can have one last dance with her. Or stealing a motorcycle and driving cross country into unknown dangerous territory to say goodbye to a corpse. Or hoping that your loved one will wake up as something rotted and empty just so you can hash out your unfinished business. As the title suggests, burying the dead has more than one meaning, literally and figuratively.

Through this, the protagonist finds a way to forgive and find closure while also finding friendship and new life in the face of tragedy in the unlikeliest place. It is this that makes this film low key beautiful. It’s more of a slow burn drama with horror elements than a horror movie, but director Zak Hilditch does the slow burn drama end of that equation well.

4 out of 5 stars.