by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Daisy Ridley, Mark Coles Smith, Brenton Thwaites, Matt Whelan
Intro:
… there’s plenty to dig in We Bury the Dead.
It seems that “elevated horror”, the naff-as-hell label that started appearing around 2014, has pretty much died a death. Thankfully. Popularised by the success of quasi-arthouse releases like The Babadook (2014), The Witch (2015), elevated horror became a bit of linguistic cudgel, a way that wankers could distance themselves from the sort of fans who enjoy a good old fashioned slasher flick or a gut-munching chunk-blowing zombie masterpiece from back in the day.
Of course, what the term completely ignores is that genre films have run the gamut from low culture to lofty ideas since time immemorial. For every James Whale there was a Herschell Gordon Lewis, for every Alfred Hitchcock a Lucio Fulci, for every Ari Aster an Eli Roth.
It’s totally fine to enjoy all manner of treats across the wide spectrum that encompasses the horror genre.
Why are we banging on about this?
Well, it’s because We Bury the Dead, the latest film from Aussie writer/director Zak Hilditch (These Final Hours, 1922) would have absolutely been tarred with the elevated genre brush had it been released five years ago, which likely would have limited the sorts of audiences who’d get along to it. Now, in 2026, we can look at this smart, stylish, tense little piece and appreciate it without affected labels.
We Bury the Dead is set on the east coast of Tasmania after a massive blunder by the United States detonates an experimental superweapon that essentially wipes out the entire island. Those who don’t die outright are left in a state of zombie-like half consciousness, eerie and increasingly agitated. Into this grim reality arrive body disposal volunteers and army troops, including American physio Ava Newman (Daisy Ridley).
Ava has a very personal reason to be stepping onto Tasmanian shores, her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) was staying in a Tassie resort when the disaster occurred and she’s using the grim task of disposing of bodies as a pretext to get to him and find out his tragic fate. When she teams up with nihilistic hottie, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), the pair eventually go AWOL and explore the stark, beautiful land of the dead that Tasmania has become. But will Ava find her husband, and will he be one of those strange ones that have returned from the great beyond?
The biggest strengths of We Bury the Dead are undeniably Daisy Ridley’s stellar performance and Hilditch’s direction. The former because it’s nice to see that the actress from the beleaguered Star Wars sequels can actually act. In fact, there’s a real simmering guilt and melancholy that’s just below the surface at all times that makes Ava a fascinating protagonist to follow. The latter, because Hilditch can nail a vibe with such fierce alacrity (check out the deeply underrated Stephen King adaptation 1922 for proof of that) and he gives post-apocalyptic Tasmania such a strong sense of place, of rich texture, that it practically drips with atmosphere.
On the downside, the script (also by Hilditch) takes a little while to get going. The first act will feel very familiar to anyone who ever sat through more than a couple of episodes of The Walking Dead or watched a Romero living dead flick from back in the day. Certainly, the zombies here are mechanically very different (in nicely creepy ways) but there’s a sense of overfamiliarity here in the set up. The second act and beyond, however, are much more engaging, particularly when Mark Coles Smith (who was so memorable recently in Beast of War) enters proceedings. Now, to be clear, this is much more a story about loss, grief and the fallacy of closure than it is a straight-ahead horror flick, but when it does lean into its genre core, it’s undeniably effective.
What we end up with is a slowburn, emotionally resonant, nervy little yarn that takes full advantage of its doomed setting and features a terrific lead performance from an actress who has finally found material worth her talent. Zak Hilditch does stellar work with a pervasive sense of existential dread and even though his script isn’t going to transform the zombie genre as we know it, there’s plenty to dig in We Bury the Dead.
