By John Corrado

In We Bury the Dead, Australian writer-director Zak Hilditch offers his own take on the zombie movie and survival thriller. The film opens with news reports of a magnetic pulse weapon accidentally being deployed by the United States military during testing, killing half-a-million people in Tasmania.

Daisy Ridley, continuing her post Disney Star Wars career, stars in the film as Ava Newman, an American woman who volunteers as part of a humanitarian aid organization to help retrieve the dead bodies from abandoned homes. But some of them are randomly waking up. The military cautions that they are slow moving, and to be dealt with “humanely” with a shot to the head.

The journey has double meaning for Ava, who wants to locate her missing husband (Matt Whelan), who was in Australia on a business trip when disaster struck. She hopes that recovering his body will bring some closure, regardless of whether or not he is awake, but he’s in an area of Tasmania that is still heavily restricted.

From here, We Bury the Dead unfolds like a road movie. Ava is joined by a rebellious volunteer, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), who is also willing to break away from the group, and a soldier named Riley (Mark Coles Smith). The film becomes something a little darker and weirder as it goes along, including one particular detour that goes from feeling mournful to disturbing and tense.

Hilditch does a fine job of building tension during several sequences, underpinned by the constant shock of disturbing images of bodies left behind by this disaster (and the unsettling sound design of grinding teeth). Hilditch works with cinematographer Steve Annis to deliver some haunting imagery, including impressive overhead shots of the barren landscapes as they travel through them. The rural Australian backdrop is a key aspect of why this film is able to work on a limited budget, with a scope that feels larger than what it likely cost.

The somewhat threadbare story can feel a little stretched out, even at just 95 minutes, and a few of the tonal shifts don’t quite work. There’s also ultimately a religious allegory aspect to it that feels underdeveloped. But We Bury the Dead functions as a solid little genre film. It’s carried by a decent performance from Ridley, who mainly underplays it, wisely avoiding histrionics in her grounded portrayal of a woman navigating the zombie apocalypse.

Film Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)

We Bury the Dead opened exclusively in theatres on January 2nd. It’s being distributed in Canada by Game Theory Films.