SXSW: Daisy Ridley Captures Grief In ‘We Bury The Dead’

Written and directed by filmmaker Zak Hilditch (1922, These Final Hours), We Bury The Dead is an emotionally charged thriller after a military experiment decimates the people of Tasmania. Daisy Ridley (Star Wars) leads the film as Ava, a desperate woman who has left her life to join the “Body Retrieval Unit,” hoping to find her husband (Matt Whelan).

Starting in north Tasmania, Ava is confined to her unit, and they are restricted from going South due to large ongoing fires. But just when she starts to accept that her husband is certainly dead, she witnesses the corpses she’s burying start to show signs of life. That’s when she asks Cal (Brenton Thwaites), a man in her unit who knows how to ride a motorcycle, for help. The two travel southward through a chaotic and burning Tasmania, meeting someone else along the way (Mark Coles Smith).

While the undead are common in storytelling, Zak Hilditch’s approach to them feels special. After the whole of Tasmania is killed in an accidental US weapon test off its coast, there is an enormous effort to bury the dead and search for survivors. Only, in some cases, the dead come back to life in a comatose state. Unable to speak, there is nothing behind their eyes, just a slow-moving jaw and the sound of the teeth scraping against each other.

The audience learns about the dead at the same pace as Ava. She experiences new situations, a blend of aggressive dead attacking and the dead who just want to move on. This also makes every single affected person that Ava sees a mystery. Will they attack? Will they stand and stare into the distance? The uncertainty that every interaction brings makes We Bury The Dead tense and keeps this relatively slow film expertly paced.

Death is only the first part of grieving. What comes after is where Zak Hilditch sets his lens.

This is not a zombie movie with action. Instead, the spectacle of an opening scene sets the stage for the audience to watch the aftermath. Looking through the wreckage of lives lost and making the decision to kill the ones that rise is how We Bury The Dead handles its undead at first. The Body Retrieval Unit goes in and out of homes, carrying bodies to be identified and disposed of, setting off a flare for the military to handle the ones that have woken up. This isn’t about jump-scare zombies, fast zombies, or even defending yourself against them.

We Bury The Dead is just what the title says. It is about learning to live in the aftermath of disaster and how grief forms. The undead reanimate because of unfinished business, but those who can’t complete it go feral and attack people, but not at first.

The stillness of each set as it’s disrupted by either Ava and her travel companion or the dead helps inject a thrill into a relatively quiet film. Hilditch’s strength has been mixing genres to craft something unique, usually pulling together horror and crime. Here, it’s not about crime but commitment. Romance drives this dramatic zombie tale.

We Bury The Dead is a quiet and inventive experience in the zombie genre. It’s become increasingly harder to strike new ground when telling new stories about grief and the undead. Last year’s Handling The Undead was able to do that; this year, We Bury The Dead has also met the challenge. This film is about the holes that death leaves in life. Still, more importantly, it’s about how unfinished business animates the dead and, ultimately, how it pushes Ava to put her life at risk until she finally finds her husband.

We Bury The Dead is powerful in its silence as it navigates humanity.

For her part, Ava can be both frustrating and endearing. At the start, you feel for her. Ridley’s performance brings grief to the surface, and her tenacity to survive is her strongest quality. The softness she brings to the role and her vulnerability are important as the film’s third act sheds more light on her marriage. As her reasons for trekking across Tasmania become more clear, her guilt takes the spotlight.

But Ava’s frustrating choice in the film’s ending shows she hasn’t changed. We Bury The Dead would have been extremely close to perfect if it hadn’t been for the film’s last minutes. It’s too cliche and too detached from every other part of the film. It’s a shift in how we understand the story unfolding and, if anything, proof that the growth we thought Ava had completed maybe didn’t stick.

Outside of that one decision, however, We Bury The Dead is a stunning film. The undead help us understand ourselves and life. In this film, Zak Hilditch navigates it all beautifully. Tense, unique, and unafraid to let silence dominate a scene, We Bury The Dead is nothing like you would expect and everything that makes a zombie story compelling. It is a thrilling drama instead of an action-packed horror, but it’s Daisy Ridley’s pained performance that makes this film stand out.

We Bury The Dead screened as a part of the 2025 SXSW Film Festival.