Having bellyflopped at the American box office, Zak Hilditch’s survival horror film (bypass lazy reviews that call it a ‘zombie’ movie, please) swerves a theatrical release in the UK and makes its swift debut on physical media. It’s probably for the best.
Despite some impressive visuals and a real sense of the apocalyptic in its depiction of an environment compromised by human hubris, this isn’t an action film full of scenes of infected monsters hungry for human flesh being sliced and diced by machete-wielding testosterone-bloated macho men. We Bury the Dead has its tense moments, of course, but at its core, it’s a well-observed, quiet meditation on grief and loss, with Daisy Ridley setting out on a quest to find her missing husband even though, we discover through a number of subtle flashbacks, their relationship was losing its way long before the disaster that kept them apart.
The United States “accidentally” detonates an experimental weapon off the Eastern coast of Tasmania. The city of Hobart is destroyed, and anyone caught in the blast is considered braindead. However – and here’s the tenuous zombie angle – some of the ‘braindead’ regain some basic motor function, which turns them dangerously violent. The Australian military is sweeping the area to neutralise the threat by retrieving and disposing of the bodies, and American physiotherapist Ava Newman (Ridley) volunteers to help with the clean-up, but her real aim is to find her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), who had travelled to the south of the island on a business trip before the disaster struck.
It’s not long before she’s distancing herself from the official clean-up and joining forces with free-spirited Clay (Brenton Thwaites), and they set off on a requisitioned motorcycle to travel across the island so Daisy can find out what’s happened to Mitch. The bulk of the film recounts their various adventures en route – not all of them necessarily characterised by violence and gore – where they discover that the “braindead” aren’t the only obstacle in their way.
We Bury the Dead is a powerful and engrossing character study of a woman who just wants closure, and Daisy Ridley delivers a career-best performance full of steely resolve and cool determination. She expresses Ava’s single-mindedness with an impressive physicality that doesn’t rely on great reams of expositionary dialogue. It’s all there in her eyes, and her facial expressions, and her transformation into a steely survivalist is the real engine of a film that nevertheless delivers a handful of tense moments of danger and jeopardy. We Bury the Dead deserves a rapid exhumation so it can find its proper appreciative audience on this good-looking, sharp Blu-ray release.
WE BURY THE DEAD is available now on Blu-ray.
