We Bury the Dead
We Bury the Dead
Starring Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, Mark Coles Smith, Matt Whelan
Directed by Zak Hilditch
On the island of Tasmania in Australia, a U.S. government experiment goes wrong, resulting in 500,000 deaths almost immediately, and one casualty could be American woman Ava's (Daisy Ridley) husband, Mitch (Matt Whelan). Ava travels to Tasmania a week after the tragedy to serve as a body removal volunteer, but secretly wants to travel to the forbidden zone where her husband was before the accident happened. Upon arrival she's told that some of the dead have shown signs of life, but they're harmless and if it happens the military will take them down - they're just "online," as they say, showing no signs of the humanity they once were.
Ava is paired with Clay (Brenton Thwaites), a long-haired, tatted carefree spirit who seemingly enjoys finding dead bodies, while Ava is traumatized by the families destroyed by the tragedy. On one recovery mission they find one of the victims has reanimated, but just stands and stares at them. Ava is intrigued, thinking if she can find Mitch like that, she might be able to save him. They finally manage to break out and make their way south, aided by Riley (Mark Coles Smith), a soldier who lost his wife in the blast, as Ava encounters terrors both living and undead.
"We Bury the Dead" suffers under something somewhat outside its control, but also could be the cause of it: it's not really a horror movie. Sure, there's zombies shuffling around, but it's not about a group of people surviving against a horde of the undead, but rather one woman's quest to find her husband, pretty much knowing it's a useless endeavor. If you go into the movie expecting people to get bitten, armies of the undead marching the streets, or epic battles, you'll be sorely disappointed. It's more a quest for closure, and therefore something more realistic than you'd expect in a so-called zombie movie.
To that end, the movie is really well-done. The cinematography by Steve Annis is exquisite for a zombie movie, as numerous overhead shots show how small the people are, and numerous scenes featuring Daisy Ridley's Ava are shot with gorgeous backdrops (one in particular when she's in her hotel room and opens the blinds, and she's surrounded by the red hue sunrise under the backdrop of smoke clouds). It's a real art piece movie disguised as a zombie one, as even the zombies themselves are shot with intricate care and amazing makeup and sound (the clittering of their teeth is jarring). The government says they're nothing more than reanimated shells, with no brain activity, but Ava notices that they're more intelligent than she was told, which gives her hope that her husband will be the same way.
The story itself is rather typical, as Ava and Clay traverse this destroyed world to complete a task that is essentially dead on arrival - there's no hope Mitch survived, something Ava seemingly realizes but still holds out hope he might have. They find dangers and help on the way, leading to the conclusion that is pretty much expected. There's no twists or turns you don't see coming, and while it tiptoes around unique ideas (like what these undead people could be thinking), they're abandoned in favor of generic zombie movie tropes.
The saving grace is Daisy Ridley, who gives a decent performance as American Ava (although she's not American, and she oftentimes breaks her accent and also seems to be more careful about her lines being told in American rather than with emotional punches). She lets her facial expressions do the talking, and in those moments she really tells her story, which is as thinly written as you'd expect and is driven more by her memories of her husband than herself as a fully flushed out character. Still, she commands the screen, and you're drawn to her story.
While "We Bury the Dead" touches on different ideas of a zombie movie, it relegates itself to following the tropes of the genre, while really holding back on anything that makes zombie movies exciting - rather, it's a drama about a wife trying to find her husband wrapped up in zombie wrapping paper.
The Score: B+
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