Daisy Ridley’s new zombie horror movie We Bury the Dead has started off the year with a strong Rotten Tomatoes score. Written-directed by Zak Hilditch, and also starring Brenton Thwaites, Mark Coles Smith, Matt Whelan, Chloe Hurst, and Kym Jackson, We Bury the Dead depicts the aftermath of a catastrophic military disaster and a woman searching for her husband in the ruins.
We Bury the Dead officially releases theatrically tomorrow, January 2, one of the first new movies hitting cinemas in 2026, alongside The Dutchman, with Primate, The Chronology of Water, and Greenland 2: Migration coming out next week. Now, We Bury the Dead’s strong reviews provide it with a good foundation to turn a profit, hopefully boding well for the box office this year.
As of today, We Bury the Dead has an admirable 84% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, from 45 reviews. Premiering at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in March 2025, the zombie outing’s score has been consistently in the 80s since reviews started coming in. It also currently ranks as the sixth-highest-rated movie of Ridley’s action career.
Among Ridley’s movies on Rotten Tomatoes, We Bury the Dead falls below Only Yesterday, The Eagle Huntress, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Young Woman and the Sea. It surpasses some of Ridley’s other post-Star Wars ventures, such as Magpie and The Marsh King’s Daughter.
Amid the slower month for theatrical releases, We Bury the Dead doesn’t have many competitors currently standing in its way, other than some leftovers from December that are still in cinemas, including Zootopia 2, The Housemaid, and Avatar: Fire and Ash. While moviegoers who are going to see these movies probably already have, Marty Supreme potentially offers more competition.
However, We Bury the Dead is at least an entirely different genre offering from the Oscars-bound Marty Supreme. But We Bury the Dead is also something of a precursor to the release of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple on January 16, expected to be another fascinating and critically acclaimed zombie movie to match Ridley’s entry and its own predecessor, 2025’s 28 Years Later.
With this critical reception, We Bury the Dead could also prove to be one of Daisy Ridley’s best movies overall. Ridley was launched to international fame with the debut of the Star Wars sequel trilogy in 2015, and expanded her repertoire to also include Murder on the Orient Express, Ophelia, and Peter Rabbit during this era of her career.
After the sequel trilogy wrapped up in 2019, Ridley further looked to make a name for herself in other genres, but the critical basis means We Bury the Dead could be her biggest hit yet in this regard. Ridley also recently joined Johnny Depp and Ti West’s A Christmas Carol movie, and has several more movies in the works, any of which could turn out to be something special.
Release Date
January 2, 2026
Runtime
95 minutes
Director
Zak Hilditch
Writers
Zak Hilditch
Producers
Grant Sputore, Ross M. Dinerstein, Mark Fasano, Kelvin Munro, Joshua Harris