Star Wars alum Daisy Ridley delivers an impressively modest performance in We Bury the Dead, a zombie survival thriller that offers a slightly smarter-than-average take on the undead genre. Directed by Australian filmmaker Zak Hilditch, the film premiered at SXSW and was partly funded by the Adelaide Film Festival.
The story follows Ava (Ridley), who travels to Tasmania after a catastrophic US military accident involving a weapon of mass destruction kills around half a million people. Among the dead is her husband, who was traveling there. Ava joins a volunteer team to help retrieve and identify bodies, but her real goal is to find her husband's remains in a restricted area still plagued by fires.
Ridley's character is light on dialogue, relying on her expressive facial reactions to convey grief and determination. She finds an ally in Clay (Brenton Thwaites), a rule-breaking volunteer who agrees to accompany her into dangerous territory. The twist: some of the dead are waking up, though the film treats the undead more as a curiosity than a source of terror until later stages of transformation.
Hilditch balances contemplative themes of loss with gnarly head-smashing action, avoiding the drab self-seriousness that plagues many modern horror films. While the final act loses some momentum, Ridley's performance anchors the film, giving emotional depth to a slightly underwritten protagonist.
We Bury the Dead marks another strong small-scale role for Ridley, following her acclaimed turns in Sometimes I Think About Dying and Magpie. The film is less focused on body count and more on the toll of grief, making it a solid entry in the ever-resilient zombie genre.
