This had to be one of the most boring zombie movies I’ve ever seen. I understand they were trying to do something different but this really didn’t work. It had some potential but never really amounted to much at all. Look the biggest rule about a zombie movie should be to never make it boring. This movie completely broke that rule. It’s not all bad though. The sound effects and score were really good. This also had some pretty cool imagery. The performances were fine. I never cared much for the story. I’m just so burnt out on grief horror at this point. They really seem to be overdoing it the last year or so and it’s not particularly my cup of tea. At the end of the day I couldn’t get over how boring this ended up being. * Double Feature at AMC Crestwood 18

The teeth grinding might be the most unsettling thing I've ever seen in a horror film. Get these zombies some mouthguards, please!

Not your run of the mill zombie flick. This is a story about loss, grief, survival and redemption with zombies almost as an afterthought. The zombie scenes are compelling, they’re a threat to our protagonist’s for sure, but unlike zombies we are used to - who function as automatons - these ones seem to be personally motivated. The heart of the story is the question of what motivates Ava and Clay to travel to Tasmania to do body retrieval - the revelation of their inner selves and the sadness each of them carry. It’s an Aussie production which gives it that slightly left of center take and is paced for introspection rather than in your face action. That said, It’s up there with all the great horror / thriller films to come out of Australia in recent years. I think it’s definitely worth a watch.

They tried a more drama and serious approach but it was a total snooze fest. Ultra boring, no story, no actuall reason for making this movie. And i was not expecting a zombie fight or anything i'm down for a nice apocalyptic slow movie but it was an epic fail

I already knew I was going to like We Bury the Dead, but I ended up loving it even more than I expected. It is a zombie film filled with elements we have seen many times before — empty roads, abandoned buildings, hotels turned into traps and characters moving among corpses — yet it still manages to find its own perspective within a genre that seemed to have shown us everything. The story follows Ava, a woman who enters a devastated zone hoping to find her missing husband. A military catastrophe has left hundreds of thousands dead, and the army needs volunteers to identify and bury the bodies. But some of those bodies begin to move, and what appeared to be a humanitarian mission becomes a journey through a territory where it is no longer clear who is completely dead or what may still remain inside them. Zak Hilditch directs the film with far more interest in grief, guilt and emotional wounds than in creating a simple zombie bloodbath. There is violence, blood and some genuinely disturbing moments, but the real center of the film is Ava and the personal reasons that lead her into a place almost everyone else would desperately avoid. Her journey is not only about finding her husband, but also about facing a part of her life that she has never fully managed to put in order. The film gradually reveals the past through small fragments. It does not immediately explain what happened or what kind of relationship Ava and her husband shared, but instead drops memories, images and details that slowly change our understanding of her. This structure works extremely well because it turns the search into something more complicated than a simple rescue mission. Every new piece of the past brings more pain, doubt or guilt and forces us to reconsider what Ava is really doing. That is why I do believe there is a love story at the center of the film, although it is neither conventional nor idealized. It is a story about what remains when a relationship breaks, changes or becomes suspended by something that can no longer be undone. The zombie apocalypse provides the setting, but what truly drives the film is the need to find answers, confront memories and discover whether anything can still be saved, even if it is not exactly what one expected to find. Daisy Ridley is magnificent because she understands that conflict perfectly. She does not play Ava as an action heroine or as a permanently broken victim. She makes her tired, frightened and full of contradictions, but also capable of continuing when everything seems to push her in the opposite direction. There is a great deal of contained pain in her performance, but it never feels exaggerated. The film trusts her expressions, her silences and the way she reacts to each new discovery. Brenton Thwaites also does excellent work. He had already shown as Dick Grayson in Titans that he could bring humanity to characters marked by darkness, and here he provides a warm, approachable presence that balances the film extremely well. His character brings companionship and a little warmth into a completely devastated world without becoming simple comic relief or breaking the tone. The relationship that develops between them gives more life to the central part of the journey and prevents it from becoming merely a succession of threats. Visually, there are moments that strongly recall Black Summer. Not because the film openly copies it, but because of the way it observes spaces, allows certain shots to breathe and turns every building into a possible threat. The hotel is the clearest example. We have seen abandoned hotels in hundreds of films and series, but here they work again because of the silence, the sound and the constant feeling that something may be waiting on the other side of any door. The zombies also have a different presence. They are not merely bodies that run, attack and exist to provide jump scares. Their movements, sounds and certain behaviors create the feeling that there is something unusual about them, something that does not quite fit the familiar image of the undead. The film introduces some extremely interesting ideas around this and perhaps could have explored them further, but even without taking them to their limit, it makes its creatures unsettling and difficult to forget. It is true that the film sometimes returns to familiar territory. There are decisions that any fan of the genre will recognize, situations we have seen before and a section where it moves closer to conventional zombie horror. But it never completely loses its identity, because the direction continues to rely on atmosphere, sound and Ava’s emotional weight rather than simply piling up attacks. The music is excellent throughout. Clark’s score creates a mournful, strange and threatening atmosphere, as though the landscape itself were breathing alongside the characters. The selected songs do not feel as though they have been placed there merely to decorate scenes, but to complete what the film is trying to express. The use of Metric is especially powerful and leaves behind an emotional feeling that is extremely difficult to shake, without needing to explain here when or how it appears. We Bury the Dead proves that great stories can still be told within the zombie genre. It contains familiar elements and perhaps does not develop every idea as deeply as it could, but it has a magnificent atmosphere, a very strong emotional story, distinctive direction and an extraordinary Daisy Ridley. It does not use the dead only to provoke fear, but to speak about those who are still alive and do not know what to do with everything they have lost. It is an original zombie film even when it returns to familiar images, with excellent performances, magnificent music and a story that continues circling in your mind after it ends. Within such an overused genre, that is already a remarkable achievement.