We Bury the Dead

I am a big fan of Daisy Ridley so I was excited to see her new movie We Bury the Dead last night.  While it does have some unsettling sequences involving zombies, I really liked the exploration of grief and things left unresolved when a loved one dies.  After a catastrophic military experiment conducted by the U.S. leaves the entire population of Tasmania dead in an instant, volunteers are needed to help retrieve and bury all of the dead bodies.  There are rumors that some of the dead are waking up so Ava (Ridley) volunteers hoping to find her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), who was on a work retreat at a resort on the southern tip of the island, because they parted on bad terms.  She enlists the help of Clay (Brenton Thwaites), another member of the body retrieval team, and has a sinister encounter with Riley (Mark Coles Smith), an officer in the Australian Army, as she makes the dangerous journey to the resort while flashbacks detail her deteriorating relationship with Mitch.  She eventually finds Mitch's body but realizes that she must make peace with herself rather than with him.  This is a new and interesting take on the zombie genre because the ones who wake up are those who have unfinished business and I especially loved a scene in which a father wakes up in order to bury his family.  It is a meditative character study rather than an action thriller but the design of the zombies is incredibly unnerving, especially the disconcerting sounds they make as they become reanimated, and there are some tense moments when Ava encounters several of the zombies (as well as some moving moments with a few of them).  Ridley gives a haunting performance (she is often the only one on screen) because she is able to effectively convey so many different emotions with just a nuanced change in expression.  There are a few odd tonal shifts throughout but I enjoyed this and definitely recommend seeking it out (it seems to be flying under the radar because I could only find one theater screening it near me).

Note:  It seems like all of the best post-apocalyptic movies are set in Australia (especially the Mad Max franchise).