By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites and Mark Coles Smith
Written and directed by Zak Hilditch
Vertical
It’s a promising sign that the 2026 genre schedule is starting out with a movie that successfully takes a less-traveled approach to a fright-film standard. It should be noted that WE BURY THE DEAD is a zombie movie that isn’t a zombie movie first and foremost; like 2023’s underseen, underrated HERD, it posits a world overrun by the undead as the setting in which to tell a very human story of the people making their way through it.
In this case, the “world” is Tasmania, where all life has been decimated by the “accidental deployment” of an experimental U.S. military weapon. Those folks not killed in the initial blast have had their brains blanked by the resulting EMP, but when Ava (Daisy Ridley) travels there from the States to volunteer in the army’s body-disposal operation, she learns that, as a couple of soldiers euphemistically put it, there has been “unusual behavior from some of the deceased,” who have “come back on-line.” WE BURY THE DEAD writer/director Zak Hilditch takes the ghoul genre’s typically jaundiced view of the military; however, despite Ava running into occasional anti-American sentiment, his movie never strains for topicality, letting any echoes of current tensions speak for themselves.
Ava has a very specific reason for wanting to venture into this blighted territory: Her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) was on a work retreat in the southern part of the country, and she’s anxious to find out what has happened to him. Before she’s able to go AWOL from her assignment to seek him out, Hilditch does a swift, efficient and resonant job of establishing the territory and the toll the grisly work takes on some of her fellow volunteers. One of them, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), on the other hand, has a more distanced, irreverent approach to bringing out the dead, and joins Ava in attempting to trek past the city of Hobart (ground zero for the destruction) in search of Mitch.
From the beginning, there’s a strong sense of scope to WE BURY THE DEAD; though made with modest finances, this doesn’t feel like a low-budget exercise. Shooting on well-chosen, evocative Western Australia locations, Hilditch and cinematographer Steve Annis find consistently imaginative ways to shoot and light key scenes and setpieces. A salute also goes to the prosthetics team led by Jason Baird (an Oscar nominee for ELVIS whose many genre credits include HOUSE OF WAX, SEE NO EVIL and THE SHALLOWS) and makeup and hair designer Hayley Atherton. These artisans don’t attempt to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the zombies’ look, but rather go for a medical/biological reality that stands up even in the harsh light of the sun. Even more unnerving than the walking dead’s ghastly visages is the constant grinding of their teeth, as created by sound designers Duncan Campbell and Tom Heuzenroeder; not since Kayako’s death croak in the JU-ON/GRUDGE movies, or maybe Charlie’s tongue-clicking in HEREDITARY, have horror characters been so defined by the noises they make.
Although there are some skillfully deployed scares involving the revived corpses (some shambling, some fast), carnage and mayhem aren’t WE BURY THE DEAD’s focus or endgame. It’s a study of Ava (performed with great feeling by Ridley) attempting to come to terms with what might have happened to Mitch, which colors how she responds to the walkers she encounters over the course of the movie. During an early discovery of an ambulatory corpse, Ava believes she caught a sign of true life in its eyes, reflecting her hopes for her husband—a theme not often explored in zombie cinema. Indeed, a few moments of black humor notwithstanding, there’s a respect for the dead, and the tragedy of both their passing and their resurrection, that’s uncommon for the genre. Ava’s scenes with Clay, and with a soldier named Riley (BEAST OF WAR’s Mark Coles Smith), further express these ideas in psychological rather than visceral ways. While this may not satisfy those desiring a devoured-flesh-and-bloodbath, it’s a different kind of vision that Hilditch quite successfully realizes. His film, as the title suggests, addresses how difficult it can be to keep the dead buried, both physically and emotionally.
