Producers: Kelvin Munro, Grant Sputore, Ross Dinerstein, Joshua Harris and Mark Fasano Director: Zak Hilditch Screenplay: Zak Hilditch Cast: Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, Mark Coles Smith and Matt Whelan Distributor: Vertical
Grade: B-
It’s rather a tease to bill Zak Hilditch’s film as a zombie movie. Yes, resurrected corpses appear periodically, and they have the customary ghoulish look, though more unsettling is the noise some of them make by gritting their teeth; the sound, like two stones clashing against each other, is truly unnerving.
But “We Bury the Dead” is more about the grief—or lack thereof—of the living who must cope with the reality of mass death than with the sort-of zombies. It’s a mournful take on troubled survival rather than a scare-fest.
The premise is that the entire population of Tasmania has been wiped out by the testing of an electromagnetic weapon, and volunteers are required to search for, and bury, the remains of the hundreds of thousands of dead. One is Ava Newman (Daisy Ridley), whose husband had been attending a business conference in the extreme south of the island, an area still closed to civilians by the military. She’s paired with Clay (Brenton Thwaites), a long-haired ruffian who admits that he’s joined the effort to impress his family, which has pretty much written him off as a self-centered loser.
The process is complicated by the resurrection of some of the corpses, who become lumbering creatures—not particularly dangerous, the military assures the participants, but quite ugly. If any of those show up, the authorities are to be informed so that they can be re-killed.
The early outings are disconcerting and occasionally frightening, of course, but though an unlikely pair Ava and Clay work together reasonably well. Ava’s goal, however, is to go south as quickly as she can to find her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), whom she’s grieving although—as periodic flashbacks show—their marriage was troubled. When they come upon a garage housing a souped-up motorcycle, Clay suggests that they use it to escape into the forbidden southern zone, and she agrees to the reckless plan in hopes of finding Mitch.
At one point in the journey they’re attacked by an aggressive corpse but rescued by Riley (Mark Coles Smith), a somber military man on a solo mission to deal with the reanimated dead. He separates Ava and Clay, soon informing her that her partner took an opportunity to escape on the bike and that he is also grieving the loss of his spouse, who was pregnant when she died. He agrees to take her south to search for Mitch but suggests they first stop at his house, and there Ava discovers that his purposes are very dark indeed, the result of his obsession with his dead wife and the child she was going to give birth to.
Without revealing too much about how it comes about, suffice it to say that eventually Ava and Clay reunite, and she finds her husband in circumstances that confirm the worst about the state of their marriage. But Hilditch feels compelled to add hopeful touches, not only in Clay’s softening but in signs of persistent humanity among the reanimated—an episode involving one of the “undead” who treats his deceased companions compassionately, and especially the very close, in which Riley’s wife proves that Tasmania’s future is not quite as bleak as surmised.
As paced by Hilditch and edited by Merlin Eden, “We Bury the Dead” is slow and brooding, but its mournful deliberation is given heft by Ridley, who brings genuine emotion to Ava; Thwaites and Smith register as the two very different men her own obsession affects. The film has a gritty, authentically desolate look thanks to Clayton Jauncey’s grim production design and Steven Annis’ cinematography, which does nonetheless allow for some beauty in a funeral sequence toward the close. (Chris) Clark’s score adds to the solemn mood.
Anyone looking for a standard zombie horror movie should look elsewhere. But Hilditch has delivered a contemplative reflection on the relationship between the “undead” and those who have survived the catastrophe that created them—a contrast to “Night of the Living Dead” and its numerous offspring that some will find dull, but others will appreciate for its ruminative quality. It’s an attitude it shares with “28 Years Later,” but on a quieter, less frantic level.