Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!
There are times when I look at a film that a lot of the world outside of the film needs to be addressed. That’s definitely the case with We Bury the Dead, and it has nothing to do with the plot of the movie (although having the U.S. kill everything on the island of Tasmania certainly feels relevant). No, this is about the star of the film, Daisy Ridley. We need to take into account the toxicity of many an average Star Wars fan, who will reflexively hate anything Ridley touches for years specifically because they object to the character she played in some movies. We Bury the Dead is a great example of this—critic approval is almost double that of average viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, and while that does happen, many times it happens because of people who have an agenda.
The idea of We Bury the Dead isn’t going to be immediately obvious, but we’re going to figure it out as the audience in the first few minutes. After seeing a bit of the relationship of Ava (Ridley) and her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), we find out about the inciting incident of the film. The U.S. has accidentally tested a new weapon on Tasmania, destroying the city of Hobart and killing everything else on the island. Clean up teams are sent in, and Ava volunteers, because her husband was on a work trip on the southern end of the island. In her orientation, we learn that some of the brain dead bodies are waking up—while disturbing, most of them are peaceful.
Ava is eventually paired up with Clay (Brenton Thwaites), who has come to Tasmania to help. We’ll eventually learn that Clay is here to demonstrate to his family that he is not entirely self-centered. When he and Ava find a motorcycle club, they decide to leave the team and head south, to a part of Tasmania still ruled off-limits and, not coincidentally, where Mitch was for his meeting. As they progress, they discover that the dead who have returned seem to become more and more agitated the longer they have been back.
Eventually, while being attacked by one of the returned, they meet a soldier named Riley (Mark Coles Smith), who is also apparently working on his own. Clay vanished in the night, and we learn that Riley has come to this part of Tasmania to find his pregnant wife. It’s soon evident that Riley is not adjusting well to everything that is happening. He demands that Ava put on some of his wife’s clothing and dance with him, and becomes enraged when he discovers that Ava has not removed her own wedding ring.
We Bury the Dead is a very different style of zombie movie, one that genuinely avoids a lot of the clichés and tropes of the genre. While the returned do eventually become more violent and aggressive, there is no indication that anyone attacked by them will become infected—particularly because there is no infection. In fact, there’s no indication that the zombies of this film are ghouls—they’re just violent. This isn’t about the world suddenly becoming overrun with the undead, but about dealing with the aftermath of something terrible and some unintended consequences.
Because of this, We Bury the Dead is far more contemplative than the typical movie of this type. In that respect, it is very reminiscent of Maggie more than anything else. The sequences of teams cleaning up the dead bodies around the island come across in large part as homages to the early scenes in 28 Days Later, especially with groups of bodies populated by one or two active undead. It also feels like some later scenes in the original version of The Stand.
So why wasn’t this film embraced by the horror community? I think there are a few clear reasons. One is, as mentioned at the top, Star Wars fans are frequently toxic and have decided that anything Daisy Ridley touches needs to be attacked. Another issue, and it’s a significant one, is that We Bury the Dead really attempts to do something very different and tries to create something that almost feels like it doesn’t belong in the zombie genre.
This second aspect of the film is important on a deeper level, potentially a subconscious one. Zombie films in general are all about tension and constant danger. These are films that put the cast of characters in constant grave danger and force them to deal not only with the undead threat but with the terrible behavior of other human beings. In We Bury the Dead, the dead are dangerous only in spurts, and only infrequently. To some, that has to feel like a betrayal of expectations.
Why to watch We Bury the Dead: Another good revamping of the zombie subgenre.
Why not to watch: It may go too far away from expectations for many people.
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