[FILM REVIEW] WE BURY THE DEAD Review (2025)
Summary: Ava, a desperate woman whose husband is missing in the aftermath of a catastrophic military experiment, joins a “body retrieval unit,” but her search takes a chilling turn when the corpses she’s burying start showing signs of life.
Year: 2025
Cinema Release Dates: TBA (Australia), TBA (Thailand), TBA (UK), 2nd January 2026 (USA)
VOD Release Dates: TBA
Country: Australia, USA
Director: Zak Hilditch
Screenwriter: Zak Hilditch
Cast: Rachelle Emanuel-Smith (Julia), Salme Geransar (Private Clarkson), Holly Hargreaves (Mrs. Smith), Chloe Hurst (Katie), Kym Jackson (Lieutenant Wilkie), Takia Morrison (Jane), Dan Paris (Captain Vance), Daisy Ridley (Ava), Mark Coles Smith (Riley), Brenton Thwaites (Clay), Matt Whelan (Mitch)
Running Time: 94 minutes
Classification: TBC (Australia), TBC (Thailand), TBC (UK), TBC (USA)
OUR WE BURY THE DEAD REVIEWS
David Griffiths and Kyle McGrath’s We Bury The Dead Review
Remember when the French were doing nuclear tests in the 90s close to the coast of Australia? You may not remember because thankfully nothing terrible ended up occurring. Unfortunately for the Island of Tasmania this would not always be the case.
An experimental US pulse weapon has accidentally been detonated within range of the Australian continent. The mainland was untouched however the entirety of Tasmania is slaughtered. Hobart was wiped off the map and the rest while still standing was hit by a shock wave which disabled the brain activity of all living things. 500,000 men, women and children dead in an instant, their corpses now rotting in their homes.
What follows is a clean-up detail the horror of which never seen before. An entire state of bodies which need to be ID’d and disposed of. Volunteers come to do their part like Ava (Daisy Ridley), an American woman in search of her husband in the still quarantined southern Tasmania. But there have been rumours that not all of the dead remain still. Some of them have been “reactivating” with potentially unfinished business…
An Aussie post (almost) apocalypse film is one of those things which put Ausploitation cinema on the map with the release of Mad Max (1979) & Mad Max 2 (1981). Well Australian filmmaker Zak Hilditch has tapped into this genre in the past. He brought us an end of the world redemption thriller with ‘These Final Hours’ (2013) introducing us to a young Angourie Rice. Now some 12 years later he writes and directs a spiritual successor, a zombie film with some bogan flair.
I admit however that I am a little zombie’d out these last few years. The classics are still the classics and there’s always the odd gem which pops up. But the sheer oversaturation has meant that zombies themselves have become tiresome in games, movies, TV and even comics. It really does take something special to make a zombie film stand out today.
Which luckily ‘We Bury the Dead’ achieves! Zak Hilditch’s zombie, post apocalypse film isn’t really about zombies or even the apocalypse. I don’t mean that in the same way as when people say it while talking about ‘The Walking Dead’ or one of its endless number of spin-offs (again, oversatuation). ‘We Bury the Dead’ is not set in a post apocalypse as beyond Tasmania the rest of the world is going on as if nothing happened. Well besides the controversy over half a million people being unalived by a secret weapon!
It’s also not focused as heavily on the zombie aspect either with the themes of the story being more on loss and trouble moving on. Terrible things happen all the time which leave people with unfinished business of their own. How far would you go to try to see some sort of resolution with a loved one? Sometimes is there just no way to wrap things up nicely?
It’s an interesting direction to go with a horror zombie film as well as this world Zak Hilditch creates. Like in ‘These Final Hours’ for many people a disaster would give way to partying and drinking. It also would take a strong disposition to be able to move the rotting corpses of countless people. Or maybe there’s just something wrong with you in the first place.
Daisy Ridley is great as just such a mysterious woman attempting to reach her husband. Like her performance in ‘Sometimes I Think About Dying’ (2023) she does a lot without saying anything at all. We see Ava as introverted but she wasn’t always this way. As the film goes on we learn more about her, we see how far she can go for her unfinished business and view this terribly event through her eyes. A slight issue is that we’re learning things about Ava for so long that it can be hard to fully penetrate and understand the character. Not knowing the state of her mind or her relationship with her husband until we’re literally told near the film’s end.
Hilditch doesn’t have the budget of a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. Yet his experience with special effects use in the past is clear with ‘We Bury the Dead’ being epic in scope in its own way. Neighbourhoods smouldering and streets littered with the havoc of drivers who suddenly lost control. The long lonesome roads of rural Tasmania become much moreso when Ava is seemingly the only living person in the entire south of the island.
Even the portrayal of the films undead nightmares feels interesting and effective. Exactly how “dead” are they and their unpredictability always has the viewer on edge. The way in which Hilditch’s zombies grind their teeth to rumble is just unnerving and something I hadn’t seen done before. It makes this particular design genuinely creepy and breathes new life into zombies once more!
A film which manages to pull complexity from what I had previously thought was a worn out subgenre. Daisy Ridley is fascinating as the troubled woman turned zombie killer. While the zombies themselves even succeed in bringing something new to the table. Emotional, intense, creative and gory as all hell. Everything a zombie flick should aim to be in 2025!
David’s rating Out Of 5
Kyles rating Out Of 5
Average Subculture rating Out Of 5
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