We Bury The Dead (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – Ava, a desperate woman whose husband is missing in the aftermath of a catastrophic military experiment, joins a “body retrieval unit,” but her search takes a chilling turn when the corpses she’s burying start showing signs of life.

My Take – With filmmakers continuing to address grief through a horror lens, for his latest, writer-director Zak Hilditch (Rattlesnake, 1922) enters the familiar realm of zombies to explore the pursuit of closure and the emotional fallout that entails in a meditative survival drama.

Singular in perspective and intriguing in story, his film is structured as a decent moody character-focused piece that manages to find new ground when it comes to the well-trodden zombie horror, delivering a few bursts of genuine scares in the process and an awe-inducing sense of scale.

Yes, it does not exactly revive the undead genre, mainly due to director Hilditch’s hesitance to abandon familiar territory, thematic and otherwise, and a tacked-on provocative ending counteracts the strengths of this otherwise stunningly crafted feature, but held together by a magnetic performance from Daisy Ridley, his story works as a poignant enough offering on loss, while delivering the occasional zombie chase sequence, making the whole experience unique enough to make a case for further resurrection.

The story follows Ava (Daisy Ridley), a physical therapist, who signs up to volunteer in the body retrieval unit when a U.S. military experiment gone awry sets off some kind of EMP bomb off the coast of Tasmania, instantly killing everyone on the island and the victims not caught in the immediate blast are rendered brain dead.

Counted among the 500,000 dead is Ava’s husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), who was on a business trip in Woodbridge, and like a lot of the volunteers, she too has an ulterior motive, hoping against hope that she might actually find him in the mess. But that isn’t her only problem as rumors about some of the dead coming back to life is calmly confirmed at Ava’s orientation, when volunteers are told not to panic if they encounter a reanimated body and military personnel will take care of the situation more humanely.

But Ava doesn’t heed any of these warnings, and joined by her more cavalier assigned work partner Clay (Brenton Thwaites), the two circumvent the military to venture further south even as the undead keep growing more violent, more relentless, and more dangerous with every passing hour.

Here, director Hilditch gives the viewers time to acclimate to this world and Ava herself, as it quickly becomes clear that guilt is driving her forward just as much as love and desperation. He slowly doles out key information and backstory about Ava’s relationship with her husband, inter-cutting the horror-paved journey with flashbacks that help illustrate why Ava needs closure, no matter the form. Rarely has a zombie film played with the heart and tenor of a drama without sacrificing suspense or scares.

Interestingly, much of the film’s tension lies among the living. Ava encounters a soldier named Riley (Mark Coles Smith), who proves more threatening and terrifying than even the undead. His character is shown to be reeling from the loss of his wife. However, that quickly spirals into something more sinister and depraved.

The film does a brilliant job at showcasing the wrath of survivor’s guilt, while examining the pains of grief and how it can affect in adverse ways. However, director Hilditch doesn’t eliminate horror entirely: there are some shiver-inducing moments when the undead quietly appear in the background or distance of a frame, and frequent overhead shots surveying the eerily desolate landscapes are elegant in their unease.

As far as the zombies are concerned, they do look impressive for a lower budget feature. The very first encounter, both in staging and ghastly vision, delivers a potent jolt that carries the dread-inducing atmosphere far as it focuses on Ava’s personal quest. On the technical side, from the craftsmanship to the cinematography, the film delivers stunning and horrifyingly beautiful imagery.

Unfortunately, like most viewers, I too felt where the narrative ultimately leads to in the end is quite frustrating. In its way, the story just leaves off as mysteriously and abruptly, without the promise of an immediate follow-up to further develop its weirder and more compelling ideas. At the same time, there’s something appealing about the film’s ultimate modesty and its refusal to push further into its fictional world’s new zombie era.

Undoubtedly, Daisy Ridley deserves major credit here. Her performance anchors the film, and without her commitment, this story wouldn’t land at all. Never allowing the spectacle to overshadow the story or her motivation. I believed every emotion she was selling from her fear, determination, heartbreak, and exhaustion. Alongside her, Brenton Thwaites injects the spark of life as the likable authority-hating wild card in an otherwise somber and sometimes terrifying affair, while Mark Coles Smith is appropriately creepy. On the whole, ‘We Bury the Dead‘ is a decent zombie-sociological thriller that manages to tackle grief hauntingly.