Daisy Vs The Dead

2 ½ stars

For almost 60 years, filmmakers have been trying to find a way to breathe new life into the zombie genre created by George Romero and the stumbling, flesh-hungry horde he unleashed into the cinematic universe with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Some directors have made them faster, like Danny Boyle in 28 Days Later, and some have made them funnier, like Dan O’Bannon in Return of the Living Dead. Writer/director Kongkiat Komesiri raised the genre to a whole new level by giving us undead who can not only think for themselves but also can communicate with each other in last year’s excellent Operation Undead.

So it’s understandable that genre fans sitting down to watch Zak Hilditch’s new film, We Bury the Dead, come with a chip on their shoulder, waiting to see how he will upgrade the category. The good news/bad news of it is that the film does and doesn’t, because We Bury the Dead is not your traditional zombie movie. Yes, the dead, or at least some of them, do reanimate. But they’re not hungry for human flesh; they’re just increasingly pissed off that they’re dead in the first place. And they want some revenge.

The film takes place on the island of Tasmania, where the entire population – human and animal – has been wiped out as a result of a US military accident off the coast, resulting in an Electromagnetic Pulse that kills everything with a pulse of its own. Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens) stars as Ava, a woman who volunteers for a body-disposal operation in the hopes of finding her husband. Or what’s left of him.

Hilditch does a great job of cranking the tension up to 11 in the movie. Every time Ava and her body-hunting partner, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), walk into a home or business, your heart leaps into your throat, anticipating what they will find. And that’s before we’re aware that the dead aren’t all going to stay that way. The way he gradually introduces the undead, with their grinding teeth, bloodshot eyes, and desiccated flesh, adds layers and layers of anxiety without ever (or hardly ever) resorting to excessive gore or cheap jump scares.

Unfortunately, Hilditch’s story veers off the rails at times. Ava gets kidnapped by a creepy Australian soldier (Mark Coles Smith) in a subplot that adds a weird, gothic tone that doesn’t really fit, and the ending is a bit of a trainwreck. But despite hitting a few speed bumps along the way, We Bury the Dead delivers a decent new edition to the zombie genre.