Movie Review: 'We Bury the Dead' Resurrects the Zombie Genre
Daisy Ridley leads a suspenseful adventure across a bleak and terrifying dead zone
The zombie genre is so tired at this point that there’s nothing left to explore. Fast zombies, slow zombies, fungally-infected zombies, “rage virus” zombies… literal hordes have overrun movie and TV screens for the last couple decades, generating hits like The Last of Us, sprawling franchises like The Walking Dead, and long-gestating sequels like last year’s acclaimed 28 Years Later. But amidst the ravening teeth and rotting flesh of the genre’s surfeit, is there anything new to say?
(Daisy Ridley in We Bury the Dead. Vertical)
As it happens, there is. Writer-director Zak Hilditch forges a new approach by proposing that zombies might originate not by way of exotic viruses, but thanks to a powerful electromagnetic pulse designed to disrupt brains. When an experimental, American-made weapon detonates off the coast of Tasmania, the new technology works all too well and the entire island is rendered void of human life — except, that is, for the ones that come back. This reawakening is rare and unpredictable, but once they go “back online,” the zombies start off docile and confused before growing ever more aggressive.
It’s into a hellscape of staggering reanimated corpses, burning cities, psychologically shattered rescue workers, and relentless military operations that Ava (Daisy Ridley) plunges, racing to the island to volunteer with body retrieval efforts. Her actual agenda is more ambitious: She needs to find her husband, Mitch (Matt Whelan), who was attending a work retreat in a small town on Tasmania’s southern coast then the disaster occurred. Ava packs light, but carries some heavy baggage: The marriage was in crisis and unresolved issues drive her single-minded quest. Recruiting a fellow volunteer — a hunky Australian named Clay (Brenton Thwaites), with underwear model hair and wounded boy energy — she hits the road on a purloined Ducati, dodging patrolling soldiers who shoot first and ask questions never, mindless zombies with an unnerving habit of grinding their teeth to ruined stumps (a tic the film’s sound design emphasizes for maximal visceral impact), and the occasional deranged mourner who, like herself, has lost someone close.
(Brenton Thwaites in We Bury the Dead. Vertical)
It’s not an easy journey. Fresh horrors await around every bend, red-lit clouds of choking smoke straight out of the Book of Revelations hover above lifeless cities, and circumstances force Ava to leave a trail of bodies (some zombified, some not) in her wake. One horrifically poignant scene entails a father coming back to life and slowly, doggedly burying his dead family. Ava’s journey is an existential one, freighted with the prospect that if she does find Mitch he’ll probably be dead… and if not, she’ll likely wish he were. As an analogy for dysfunctional relationships, this film hits its target hard; it’s not just the film’s addled returnees from death that have been deprived of clarity and purpose. It’s the relationship at the film’s heart — and whether from dread or recognition, that’s where its universal terror lies.
In short, Hilditch’s innovative horror flick is a more than a gore fest. It’s a portrait of regret and unhinged hope that’s out to gut its audience with grief, not simply startle us with jump scares and macabre makeup.
“We Bury the Dead” opens in theaters on January 2, 2026.