I SAW WE BURY THE DEAD

Director/writer Zak (1922) Hilditch's We Bury the Dead is a new submission for the zombie genre. It takes a more contemplative, heartbroken/guilt-ridden slant than most, leaning on the likes of Maggie and 28 Weeks Later. In this case, its lead, Ava Newman, played by Daisy (Star Wars) Ridley, seeks her husband, Mitch, who may or may not have been killed and/or transformed into a zombie in Tasmania, which has been stilled by an experimental "pulse bomb" that shut down human brains. 

Many are impacted by the island catastrophe, but when the "sleepers" snap from their dormant states, they move with eerie slowness, ala George A. Romero/John A. Russo's living dead, though if allowed to ferment, they get aggressive.

To say the least, this makes things shaky for those who agree to locate the resurrected and bury the sorrowful discards. Brenton (Titans/Gods of Egypt) Thwaites' motorcycling Clay and an enigmatic soldier, Mark Cole (Beast of War) Smith's Riley, align with our protagonist's sentimental mission/quest, which features character-hinting flashbacks and lonely landscapes. 

Riley, however, holds a secret that invokes Hershel Greene's in The Walking Dead, which pushes We Bury the Dead toward its proper morbidity. 

That morbidity is a great addition to the picture (this is a horror movie, after all), but the notion of civilians volunteering for such a precarious endeavor seems a bit much. The zombies aren't creeping from every cranny, and a proper wait for crackerjack, military intervention would seem a more logical turn. Even a flimsy explanation regarding why the troops (i.e. some sort of Tasmanian National Guard) might be delayed would have been better than not, but hey, I suppose it's just as well to go with the vague flow with this one. It's more a matter of a woman's allegorical search to reinstate her past, rolled up in the guise of a man she grieves, but may not love as much as she once believed. 

I'll give credit to We Bury the Dead for daring to do something a tad different with its familiar material. It could have been the same ol' thing from start to finish, but that would've relegated it to direct-to-streaming access. What stands is pensive enough to justify a higher-profile platform, and though it's not an all-out groundbreaker, its audacious approach makes it worth the plunge.