The Reel Review
After an errant U.S. military pulse bomb kills half a million people on the Australian island of Tasmania, an American whose husband had been on a work retreat there volunteers to assist with body retrieval efforts, hoping to find him amidst reports that some of the dead are becoming re-animated and increasingly violent. Daisy Ridley and Brenton Thwaites star in this post-apocalyptic thriller.
Fans looking for action-packed zombie horror will be very disappointed in this more cerebral film that is comparatively light on the undead. What we get instead is a grim, realistic look at the aftermath of a mass death event (lots of dead bodies) and a wistful portrait of loss, grief and regret, as flashbacks reveal some of the prior relationship issues our protagonist was having with her husband.
Ridley carries the film with a convincing, lived-in performance, even when some of the plot points in the second half get a bit silly and the pacing slows to a crawl. Although the story from writer/director Zak Hilditch (1922, These Final Hours) could have been stronger, enough unexpected twists, a solid production and well-done cinematography of the Tasmanian countryside help make it worth seeing.
REEL FACTS
• Since playing the lead character in the latest Star Wars trilogy, Daisy Ridley has made a name for herself in a number of smaller budget indie films like Cleaner, Magpie and The Marsh King’s Daughter.
• Cairns native Brenton Thwaites’ movie credits include 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, 2016’s Ghosts of War and 2014’s Maleficent.
• We Bury the Dead was filmed in Hobart, Tasmania and in and around the Western Australian city of Perth.
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