There are many roads that lead to a zombie apocalypse. Dormant virus gets loose, poisoned burger creates patient zero, toxic gas brings cadavers to life. For a lot of zombie movies, the causes are more mystical. Director Zak Hilditch’s ‘We Bury the Dead’ begins with something much more familiar: a gutting news headline.
“Five hundred thousand dead in an instant,” is what newscasters claim after a U.S. military test goes wrong in Tasmania. In one moment, a surge spread across the region, killing all in its path. Instead of jumping straight to blood and guts, ‘We Bury the Dead’ asks us to let that sink in. Half a million loved ones gone, in an instant.
This more meditative take on the traditional zombie film seems to be running through our systems right now. ‘We Bury the Dead’ follows a similar pattern as Thea Hvistendahl’s 2024 film, ‘Handling the Undead’: slowing us down, and making us remember the human beneath the horror. I’d guess global headlines and current events will continue to inspire.
As many deal with the unimaginable loss in Tasmania, we center in on Ava, played by Daisy Ridley. She’s an American, but signs on to support with body retrieval on the ground — though her primary goal is to locate her husband, who was on a business trip in Tasmania when the tragedy struck. Their marriage fell apart just before he left. For what, we don’t know just yet.
As we’ve seen in higher budget horror, the zombie apocalypse can be expensive. While clearing city centers and hiring hordes of actors caked in blood likely wasn’t an option for the small production, ‘We Bury the Dead’ gives us a glimpse of eerie reality. Production designer Clayton Jauncey creates a grimy, empty landscape that’s only slightly askew from the norm. If a zombie virus ran loose, the streets wouldn’t necessarily look different overnight. There would just be less people to fill the space. This is actually what it would be: the smell of death and the military stalking about to “serve and protect.”
Ava joins other volunteers as they tug individuals, couples, whole families out of their homes for identification and burial. It’s eerie. Like something out of the most tragic of true crime tales, meals are left at tables, rooms are just as the inhabitants left them — here one moment, gone the next.
This is where ‘We Bury the Dead’ derives its horror: the small reminders that these are not the frightful dead, but the once-living. When one of the dead awakens, they’re effectively grotesque, dripping in unnamed goos and making a horrible, bony chattering sound. Our fear is tinged with a sadness whenever we see these poor souls. Volunteers are instructed to inform the military when they encounter a reanimated body. This way, they can be shot point blank and made dead for good, like animals being put out of their misery.
In any other zombie movie, we’d be cheering on the survivors and moving on to the next safe house. Instead, we’re encouraged to ruminate, just like Ava is each time she comes face to face with a “zombie.” Who were these individuals? Did they have families? What if that was us? While there’s a zero percent chance Ava’s husband is alive, she wants to believe there’s something still there, a soul that can accept her apology.
Ridley taps into a melancholy that sets the tone for the film — a soft yet simmering place to rest its questions about grief, guilt and regret. It’s another delicate, thoughtful performance in the vein of the actress’ undersung turn in 2023’s ‘Sometimes I Think About Dying.’
When Ava teams up with Clay (Brenton Thwaites) to search for her husband in the quarantine zone, the film takes the shape of a road movie, where pit stops are risks to both of their lives. And just like any classic road movie, we encounter some certified weirdos — namely a soldier named Riley (Mark Coles Smith). He’s lost his family in the disaster, justly calling it “a special kind of cruel” that he never got to say goodbye. What at first seems like a lonely guy looking for connection turns out to be a foil to Ava’s own unresolved grief: Riley is what happens when you can’t accept and let go of who you’ve lost.
Riley is more symbol than person in the context of the film, but he does give Ava a reason to show off her resourcefulness. Or for us: her final girl-ness. She’s tough, but not invincible. Her humanity is what makes the film’s more somber moments so moving.
While hiding out in a trailer, Ava watches as a father — now zombified — digs up graves for his dead family, who lie lifeless beside him. She helps put them all to rest, joining him in his very human impulse to love, to honor, to grieve. So they do have souls after all.
Later, conjuring up a conversation with her dead husband, Ava asks: “we’re just gonna leave this giant fucking mess the way it is?” The question serves as the steadily beating heart of ‘We Bury the Dead.’ People die, and no amount of guilt or road tripping will make them rise. And that road to acceptance? It’s messy, sometimes terrifying, but always human.
‘We Bury the Dead’ opens nationwide in theaters on January 2, 2026.
