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What is We Bury the Dead About?
We Bury the Dead is an Australian horror/drama about a woman searching for her husband after a military disaster results in the dead rising.
Ava is an American woman who travels to Tasmania in the wake of a military disaster that has left half a million people dead. She volunteers to help with body retrieval, but her real goal is to travel to the town of Woodbridge where her husband was staying while on a business trip. She’s told that travel to Woodbridge is off limits due to it being deep within the most heavily affected area, but she and a fellow volunteer, Clay, ditch their duties and head off on their own. Before they reach their destination they’ll come face to face with the unpredictable undead, as well as the unstable living.
We Bury the Dead was written and directed by Zak Hilditch (1922, These Final Hours). Daisy Ridley (Rey in Star Wars) stars as Ava, Brenton Thwaites (Titans, Oculus) plays Clay, Mark Coles Smith is a soldier named Riley, and Matt Whelan is Ava’s husband Mitch.
We Bury the Dead Review
Though the trailer for We Bury the Dead might seem to promise exciting zombie action and desperate survival thrills, these are not the things you should be looking for from this film. The main focus of the story is on the drama of Ava and her emotional journey as she comes to terms with what she expects to find if she can locate her husband. This is also the best part of the movie.
Ava and Mitch’s relationship is unknown to us as the story gets underway. We know that Ava appears desperate to find her husband, even knowing that he is almost certainly dead, but we don’t know any more than that. Then, as Ava has new encounters and experiences while finding the bodies of others and seeing the dead rise, more of her history with Mitch is revealed.
Theirs is a complicated marriage, and those complications are teased out gradually as the story progresses. It’s a smart method of storytelling that allows the viewer to stay focused on emotions Ava is going through in the active moment rather than thinking about (and possibly judging) both Ava and Mitch and clouding our emotional response to each new obstacle. We feel what she feels. Then, when all is revealed, it’s like a one-two gut punch. The emotional core of We Bury the Dead is very well done.
The relationship between Ava and Mitch is constructed well, so it’s surprising that the few supporting characters in the movie aren’t crafted with such care. Ava’s new companion and fellow volunteer Clay is full of charisma, but as a character he is little more than a shell up until the final scenes. And even then his characterization is too ambiguous.
The other main supporting character, Riley is strangely more fleshed out than Clay, but he’s also rather simple. He’s a good dramatic foil for what Ava is experiencing in her own grief and search for closure, but he’s not much more than that. He feels like a stock character that pops up in just about any apocalyptic story. Like a plot device with only a thin layer of characterization.
Also, the final scene of the movie is way too contrived. Logically it’s a few steps past believability, and it feels melodramatic. It’s unnecessary. If the movie had ended a few minutes earlier it would have been much better. Ava’s story already had a fitting conclusion, but the final moments felt almost corny with how it tried to wrap everything up. I’m not going to spoil it here, but my point is just to say that the very end of the movie might leave you with a less than good impression. It did for me.
However, one thing I loved about We Bury the Dead is how it presents its zombies. The specifics of the military disaster that caused them, as well as the biology of how the dead rise and why they act like they do, is mostly left as a mystery. People project their own ideas onto how and why some of the dead rise and others don’t, but nobody really knows. Also, why are some of them violent and others aren’t? Good question. Leaving the true nature of the undead unknown allows them to work nicely as metaphors for any situation.
I also loved the design of the zombies. They look great, and they sound great. The zombies grind their teeth, and that aggressively uncomfortable sound helps add a wonderfully unnerving layer to every scene they’re in, whether they’re being aggressive or not.
Rating and Recommendation
Star Rating: 3 out of 5
As much as I liked the zombies and the main dramatic arc in the film, the weakness of the supporting characters and the corny ending hurt We Bury the Dead. It’s a fine movie if you like dramatic thrillers set in a unique zombie scenario, but it feels like it exists in a space between a truly moving drama and a breathtakingly exciting survival movie. So, not quite great in either category, and just pretty good overall.
We Bury the Dead opened in theaters on January 2nd, 2026.
