We Bury the Dead 4K 2024

A man wakes up in a hospital room, looks around, and realizes something is wrong. The place is empty, dusty, and dirty. He steps out of the room and sees that the hospital is abandoned. In the parking lot, he spots a little girl, is overjoyed, and calls her over, but when she turns around, it becomes clear: the girl is already dead. He shoots.

Or another version. A woman, a nurse, wakes up at home and sees that her neighbor’s daughter is acting strangely. A few seconds later, she realizes that she is no longer looking at a child, but a zombie. The girl bites her husband, who quickly turns, and the heroine has to flee. She gets in the car, gets into an accident, and miraculously survives.

These are the opening minutes of good zombie movies. They immediately hook you, establish the rules of the world, and give the viewer a sense of danger.

And how does We Bury the Dead begin? The main character, Ava, flies to Tasmania, where hundreds of thousands of people have died in a catastrophe. She joins a volunteer group that is sorting through the bodies. Through flashbacks, we learn that Ava didn’t come just to help. She is looking for her husband, with whom she had a very bad parting before he disappeared.

Around the twenty-minute mark, we see the first encounter with a dead person. And this is where the film really comes to life. The zombies here are portrayed in an interesting way. They don’t just run after people or crave human flesh. Their behavior depends on what they didn’t manage to do before they died. Some just stand and watch, some behave almost calmly, and some become dangerous. Plus, they have a nasty little detail: they grind their teeth, as if rubbing them together. It looks unpleasant and is memorable. The makeup deserves special praise.

The most interesting thing about the film is the dead. They aren’t your typical zombies who just run after meat. Their behavior stems from what they didn’t manage to do in life. Some stand and watch, some seem calm, and some become dangerous. They look creepy, grind their teeth, and overall, the film has several truly unpleasant and memorable moments.

But the problem is that there aren’t enough zombies in the film. They seem like the main draw, but the filmmakers constantly shift the focus to Ava’s drama. And this drama isn’t strong enough to carry the entire film. The protagonist isn’t particularly interesting, the supporting characters aren’t memorable either, and the story moves too slowly.

As a result, the film is marketed as a zombie horror, but for most of the time it plays out as a sluggish drama about grief and guilt. And that’s disappointing, because the very idea of the dead with unfinished business could have yielded a much stronger and more unusual film. Here, however, the most interesting elements remain in the background.