WE BURY THE DEAD (2024)

3 stars

Signature Entertainment. Digital HD 2 February & Blu-ray & DVD 16 February.

A massive explosion of an American experimental weapon off the coast of Tasmania. An electromagnetic pulse that causes decimation. Reports of 500,000 instantly dead.

Ava (Daisy Ridley) is watching the news as she is on a plane. The older lady sitting beside says —speaking of family member caught in the tragedy — ‘hopefully he’s one of the ones that wakes up’. Which seems like a curious thing to say. We soon find out what she means.

Ava has decided to volunteer as part of the body retrieval teams – though she has an agenda of her own, as she wants to find her husband, who was on a retreat at a hotel many miles away.

Some of the victims exhibit unusual behaviour – coming back ‘online’. As in reanimate. Seemingly docile and slow moving and oddly grinding their teeth. So, basically zombies by any other name.

She joins the coach party heading out. There is a military presence where they are dropped off. They go house to house looking for bodies which are collected up and dumped in mass graves.

Ava teams up with Clay (Brenton Thwaites) who seems unperturbed by what they are facing. If they find any still ‘active’ they let off a flare and the soldiers come in and shoot them in the head. As things progress she thinks back to her life with her husband – hoping that he may have survived some 200 miles away from where she is.

They come across one of the undead and Ava later talks to Clay, convinced that the man seemed more there than they had been lead to believe. Is she imagining it as a way of handling what she might find if and when she finds her other half? False hope perhaps?

She persuades Clay to help her in her quest across country, avoiding the military on the way. What are they heading into? Will she find her husband, and what state will he be in…?

This is an Australian/US production written and directed by Zak Hilditch and well shot by Steve Annis. Just don’t expect this to be your usual zombie escapade – there are moments of suspense driven by the presence of the risen bodies, but this is more about the characters, with Ridley fine in the central role. The emotional impact of what she is facing and how various people she interacts with are affected by what has occurred. She is looking for some kind of closure. The script drip feeds details about how these undead are not completely brain dead but doesn’t really do anything with it. You are engaged with her journey, but it’s all a bit slow. In the last half hour it does become more like a straight ahead zombie movie as the reanimated start to get more aggressive. Only bursts of what you expect. At least it tried something different with the well worn undead genre.

Steve Kirkham