Producers: Mynette Louie, Andrew D. Corkin and Lucy Liu   Director: Eric Lin   Screenplay: Marilyn Fu   Cast: Lucy Liu, Lawrence Shou, Orion Lee, Jennifer Lim, James Chen, Madison Hu, Anzi DeBenedetto, Dave Shalansky and Eric Leviton   Distributor: Vertical

Grade: B-

An actual tragedy recounted in a Los Angeles Times article by Frank Shyong is dramatized in Eric Lin’s unfussy but affecting drama.  It’s essentially a two-character piece about Irene (Lucy Liu), a Chinese-American widow suffering from terminal cancer who’s confronted by the downward mental spiral of her teenage son Joe (Lawrence Shou).  His schizophrenia has led not only to his acting out at school but to an unhealthy fascination with campus shootings.  (The two are linked when he suffers a major episode after an active shooter drill.)

In the end Irene resorts to extreme measures to prevent him from giving in to the violence he’s become obsessed with; to crib a title from another film now in release, she feels she has no other choice, given that after he turns eighteen, with her gone he’ll have no guardian to protect him from himself.

“Rosemead,” titled after the city near Los Angeles that boasts a substantial Asian-American population, is the sort of small-scaled, gritty production that will relegate it to art houses and streaming services.  And it can feel heavy-handed at times.

But it’s bolstered by strong performances from newcomer Shou and particularly Liu, who submerges her customary energy to play a haggard woman beaten down by circumstances she cannot control and stymied by cultural attitudes that compel her to act circumspectly in dealing with her son’s decline.  The owner of a small print shop, she’s placed Joe in therapy with sensitive Dr. Hsu (James Chen), but demurs at attending his sessions until prodded by the therapist, a decision that allows her to appreciate what the boy describes as one of his happiest memories—a night they spent in a motel with her late husband (Orion Lee) during a blackout.  Hsu advises Joe to focus on such moments when he feels stressed.

But Irene avoids sharing the truth about Joe’s deteriorating condition even with her closest friend Kai-Li (Jennifer Lim) and keeps to herself the news that the experimental drug she’s been relying on for treatment has failed to stop the spread of the cancer.  When the principal at Joe’s school (Dave Shalansky) suggests a transfer to a campus with better resources to help him, she declines the offer. And when Joe suffers a bad episode in which he runs into traffic and is picked up by the police—an incident that leads to the realization that in a few short months he’ll be on his own—she tries to deal with the crisis herself.

That includes visiting a nearby gun store where she learns from the owner (Eric Leviton) that Joe has been to the place, and, when the boy goes missing, putting “have you seen” posters up rather than seeking help from the authorities. 

As for Joe, we’re told, rather than shown, that he was once an exceptional student and a star athlete, and are shown that he has friends (Madison Hu and Anzi DeBenedetto) who keep encouraging him to hang out.  But he becomes increasingly withdrawn and incommunicative.  Shou portrays the boy’s decline convincingly, only occasionally lapsing into histrionics.  The result is a fine match for Liu’s impressive turn.

The ending, when Irene finds Joe after his disappearance and takes him back to the motel he remembers so fondly while leaving instructions for Jennifer to deal with their family photos, is quietly shattering.  A postscript carries the story to its sad conclusion.

“Rosemead” is primarily notable for its two lead performances; while the rest of the cast is more than competent and Lin successfully captures the intimate bond between mother and son, and production designers Evaline Wu Huang and Lauren O’Brien and cinematographer Lyle Vincent use the New York locations well, it’s Liu and Shou who give the film its undeniable power.  Joseph Krings’s editing is unforced, and though initially Will Bates’s score sounds rather tinny and obvious, it improves markedly as the film progresses. Vera Chow’s costumes play an important part in defining Irene’s character.

“Rosemead” succeeds as both a harrowing personal story and a reminder of America’s wider mental health crisis.  It’s not without flaws, but its strengths outweigh them.

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.