There’s a moment early on in We Bury the Dead where Daisy Ridley’s curious Ava carefully navigates a scorched home. Family photos still sit on shelves, eerily untouched by the disaster that has ravaged everything else. The camera lingers on each picture, giving the audience time to absorb the faces of people who once lived here. It’s a quietly devastating touch; a recurring motif that speaks to the film’s fixation on memory, grief, and the haunting echoes of the past. Director Zak Hilditch (1922, These Final Hours) uses a zombie apocalypse as his framework, but his film is far more concerned with the human wreckage left behind than the undead themselves.
Set in the aftermath of a military catastrophe that has left entire regions of Tasmania burning, We Bury the Dead follows Ava as she joins a body retrieval unit, an outfit tasked with recovering and disposing of the deceased. But for whatever reason, not all of these corpses are staying down. Some have been spotted walking amongst the ruins, making Ava and her unit’s jobs all the more difficult.
Her true purpose, however, is to sneak away from her group to track down her missing husband, who was last known to be staying at a remote resort in the affected zone. Partnering with the gruff and emotionally walled-off Clay (Brenton Thwaites), Ava embarks on a dangerous journey into the heart of the disaster, where she encounters both the horrors of the undead and the psychological toll of those still alive.
What immediately sets We Bury the Dead apart from its genre peers is its deliberate, deeply introspective approach. There are still the snarling zombies and brutal headshots that audiences expect, but Hilditch ensures that each moment of violence carries weight. The undead here aren’t just mindless monsters - they represent unfinished business, unresolved grief, and the things we wish we could take back but never can. The film’s eerie sound design plays a key role in their presence, with a horrifying crackling noise of teeth grinding together that cuts through the silence like nails on a chalkboard. Every time that sound creeps into the mix, it sends a shiver down the spine.
Ridley delivers one of the finest performances of her career, carrying the film with a raw, emotionally transparent portrayal of a woman stuck in a state of limbo. Ava is unable to move forward, unable to grieve, because she doesn’t yet know whether her husband is truly gone. It’s a powerful exploration of loss, and Ridley embodies every ounce of that pain in ways that feel deeply lived-in. Her dynamic with Thwaites’ Clay adds another compelling layer - where Ava views the retrieval mission with a reverence for the lives that were lost, Clay is coldly pragmatic. Their differing philosophies create a fascinating push-and-pull throughout the film, with Ava’s empathy constantly clashing against Clay’s hardened detachment. The arrival of Riley (Mark Coles Smith), a soldier with his own mysterious agenda, further complicates things, adding an unpredictable and unsettling human element to the journey.
Visually, We Bury the Dead is nothing short of breathtaking. The film makes remarkable use of its apocalyptic setting, with aerial shots of burning landscapes and plumes of smoke stretching for miles. The scale is vast, but Hilditch always anchors it in something personal - wide shots of desolate wastelands often transition to close-ups of Ava’s pained expressions, reinforcing the theme of individual grief against a backdrop of mass devastation. The score, provided by British electronic musician Clark, is an eerie and resonant composition that reverberates through the body, further amplifying the film’s somber and introspective tone.
While the film is steeped in heavy themes, it’s not without moments of levity. Hilditch has a keen sense of when to inject a bit of dark humor or a playful exchange between characters, giving the story necessary breathing room. It’s never a comedy, but it also doesn’t wallow in its bleakness, striking a careful tonal balance that prevents it from feeling oppressively dour. The soundtrack selections also reflect this balance, with a particularly well-placed use of Kid Cudi’s "Pursuit of Happiness" kicking off the film in unexpectedly ironic fashion.
In many ways, We Bury the Dead feels like a spiritual successor to Handling the Undead - both films use the concept of the reanimated dead to explore grief and the difficulty of letting go. But where that film leaned fully into the arthouse, We Bury the Dead manages to have its cake and eat it too. It’s an emotionally intelligent take on the genre while still delivering the tense, horror-driven thrills that audiences expect from a zombie film. It understands the balance between introspection and action, and it never feels like it’s falsely advertising itself as something it’s not.
Ultimately, what makes We Bury the Dead so compelling is its unwavering focus on its characters. It never loses sight of the fact that, at its core, this is a story about people struggling to find closure in the face of overwhelming tragedy. Every character is carrying some kind of loss, and the film acknowledges that sometimes, there are no neat resolutions - no perfect, cathartic endings. Some wounds never fully heal. Some ghosts never stop lingering. And in that way, We Bury the Dead is not just another zombie movie - it’s a haunting, deeply felt meditation on grief, memory, and the things we leave behind.
'We Bury the Dead' is now playing in theaters.
