{"id":383084,"date":"2025-12-31T18:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T18:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383084\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T18:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T18:11:07","slug":"daisy-ridley-finds-something-to-live-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/383084\/","title":{"rendered":"Daisy Ridley finds something to live for"},"content":{"rendered":"

Label a film a \u201czombie movie\u201d and our genre-trained brains zip right to the question of whether it will feature fast-moving<\/a> or slow-moving iterations of the undead. With that trope so embedded into the modern DNA of this particular horror subgenre, it\u2019s refreshing when a filmmaker puts it on the backburner and explores something more interior, which is what writer-director Zak Hilditch (1922<\/a>) does with We Bury The Dead.<\/p>\n

The Australian filmmaker uses the sparseness of his home country as a haunting backdrop for this intimate examination of a woman on a journey to understand her humanity. Ava Newman (Daisy Ridley) is an American, compelled to travel to Tasmania in the wake of an accidental American detonation of \u201csomething\u201d off the coast of the remote island. More than 300,000 are now dead, and that may include Ava\u2019s husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), who was attending a corporate retreat on the island and hasn\u2019t touched base since all communications went dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adrift in a fugue state, Ava arrives on the island to volunteer, assigned to one of many body retrieval teams organized by the Australian military. Their mission is to go into all of the rural communities that are furthest away from the impact zone to remove bodies from residences so they can be buried. Ava\u2019s seemingly selfless call to action actually masks her true intention to eventually branch out on her own to find out if her husband is alive or dead. Only after she lands does she find out that there could be a third option: A by-product of this modern catastrophe is that some victims are waking up, then quickly culled by the military.<\/p>\n

Hilditch does a fine job laying out the necessary specifics of the event, the repercussions, and the unexpected undead twist which begins more as a mystery than an overt threat. More importantly, all of the setup is used in service of Ava\u2019s physical and mental journey into this foreign reality. As she engages in the bleak, voyeuristic work of intruding into these abandoned homes to recover the dead, Ava is forced to knock on her own doors, confronting and acknowledging the unresolved complexities of her marriage. It\u2019s through a series of flashbacks framed as Ava\u2019s remembrances that the audience gets a more truthful taste of who she and Mitch were together before. A once blissful marriage is increasingly laid bare as desperately complicated and damaged by years of infertility issues, blame, and guilt.<\/p>\n

Initially, Ridley conveys much of Ava\u2019s numbness and interior conflict through her amply expressive face, with little dialogue and to great success. The opening third of We Bury The Dead provides her a rich succession of scenes that are allowed to breathe as she finds her moorings in this disturbing wasteland of lost futures and abrupt endings. Ridley\u2019s work is supported by rich sound design which provides space for Ava\u2019s solitude while also gently building an aural tapestry for this island\u2014which includes the spine-chilling noises associated with the \u201cwaking,\u201d including their signature teeth-grinding. It\u2019s sparse in execution but intensely effective in conjuring immediate tension whenever they appear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hilditch and his editor Merlin Eden set an unhurried pace for Ava\u2019s journey that might seem antithetical to modern horror, but it facilitates the way this place changes her\u2014slowly, but thoroughly, so she\u2019ll be ready to face the answers awaiting her. The inclusion of two challenging male characters also allows us to see how Ava holds herself when placed under the eyes of others. With fellow body retriever Clay (Brenton Thwaites), she develops an unconventional bond as he is bracingly candid and seemingly apathetic about the death around them. His lack of social niceties allows Ava to shed the less attractive parts of her own nature. And with Riley (Mark Coles Smith), a soldier who is also mourning the loss of a spouse, comes a disturbing encounter that grounds the story in the realities of a woman traversing any landscape alone. It\u2019s the most terrifying horror sequence of the film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for those awoken by this disaster, Hilditch takes the existential path. That means there are plenty of unanswered questions, but questions which bolster Ava\u2019s quest to determine what she wants out of life now that she may be alone. She\u2019s remarkably unafraid of those who now straddle the living and the dead and more intrigued by what she can still recognize in an ambling corpse, or a newly woken father that bestows one last act of love to his dead family. If these recently dead can still hold onto the best of themselves, what keeps the living from doing the same? For those looking to delve into more philosophical horror, We Bury The Dead is a thoughtful trek into the unknown. As Ava moves towards her own discovery, she ends up finding more truth in what remains unresolved\u2014by experiencing what grief dredges up in the living.<\/p>\n

Director: Zak Hilditch
Writers: Zak Hilditch
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Mark Coles Smith, Brenton Thwaites, Matt Whelan\u00a0
Release Date: January 2, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Label a film a \u201czombie movie\u201d and our genre-trained brains zip right to the question of whether it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-383084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}