SPOILER-FREE PLOT SUMMARY
While on a business trip, the husband of physiotherapist Ava Newman (played by Daisy Ridley) is among those lost by an accidental toxic explosion in the Indian Ocean. When she can’t get a hold of him, Ava enlists as a clean up crew worker in at attempt to find him. She flies to the area and joins a team systematically going through communities to find corpses or zombies who have somehow — for reasons they can’t explain — survived the disaster but are wildly dangerous and deemed unsalvageable. Any undead person requires an immediate military response to put them down. Terrified that her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) could be among those undead, she goes rogue in an effort to go deeper into the blast radius to reach his last known location, a resort hotel in Woodbridge. Her journey becomes riddled with encounters from both human and undead alike but to various degrees of danger, creating doubt that she’ll ever find him.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Is Daisy Ridley one of the best actors of this generation only doing small, independent films right now? She was outstanding in THE WOMAN AND THE SEA, but nobody saw it. She was great in CLEANER, which grossed just $1.3 million at the box office. And don’t get me started on her brilliance in THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER. (That driveway scene? Oh boy.) While the role didn’t call for the range of the latter, WE BURY THE DEAD is just the next “little movie” that Ridley explodes off the screen and forces the audience to appreciate her talent.
Horror movies aren’t known for their emotional depth — unless those emotions are apprehension and fear, of course — so, when one comes along like WE BURY THE DEAD, there’s just something special about it. Is it a heart-pounding, white-knuckle-the-arm-rest, adrenaline-pounding watch? From front to back, no. But there’s plenty to like here and it’s well worth your time.
It’s really too bad movies like this (and performance’s like Ridley’s) don’t get the promotional backing they need to be successful. But here’s the deal… horror movie fans, zombie enthusiasts and indie film supporters are going to discover WE BURY THE DEAD on streaming and, at that point, will wish they knew about it sooner.
After all, it’s better than both 28 YEARS LATER movies. There, I said it.
JKG SCORE: 7.0
Untitled Film Project 