We Bury the Dead (2024)
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CAST:
Daisy Ridley (Rey from Star Wars) stars in this new zombie flick from Aussie director Zak Hilditch (1922, Rattlesnake), which immediately begins with news reports of the U.S. “accidentally” releasing an experimental weapon on Tasmania, causing all sorts of death and mayhem. Amidst the chaos is a rumor that some of the dead are somehow returning to life.
We follow Ava (Daisy Ridley), who volunteers as part of a body retrieval unit with hopes that she’ll find her husband, who was on the island at the time of the incident. Unfortunately, his last location is at the part of the island that’s deemed restricted by the military, naturally leading Ava to sneak her way through the dead, the military, and everything in between. All while being accompanied by a lackadaisical new companion and fellow volunteer Clay (Brenton Thwaites).
I liked the movie. At first. In fact, the first half is a pretty solid zombie flick, where it’s not only interesting, but the zombies are even somewhat creepy. We’re introduced early on that only some of the dead return, and when they return they just stand there looking menacingly and confused at the same time. They linger in the background with grit teeth and glistening eyes, and it’s actually fairly creepy. The longer the dead roam, the more aggressive they become. It’s a simple concept, but it works, and I enjoyed the ride. Until the mid-mark anyway.
Sadly, what started out as a promising new zombie tale quickly fell into the same trappings we often see in a lot of these flicks. Specifically, when Ava encounters another survivor along the way, and well, you can probably guess the rest. From that point on the movie really grinds to a halt and simply never picked up the momentum it had in the beginning. It almost felt like a completely different film by the end, as it lazily attempts to capture some dramatic analogy of grief and the process of moving on, but fails to have any real emotional impact, at least for me anyway.
Either way, it’s not a bad movie, but it's not a good one either. It kept my interest, had some interesting zombies, some creepy-ish scenes and—successful or not—tried to offer some sort of meaningful message in the end. Despite all that, it simply couldn't live up to the promise it had in the beginning, leading to a decent (but nothing remarkable) zombie pic.