We Bury The Dead

After a military disaster in Tasmania, Ava joins a body retrieval unit, hoping to find her missing husband. But once there, she discovers that some of the dead are waking up... as something much worse.

I love Zombie films, especially post-apocalyptic ones.

Everything about the Post-Apocalyptic Zombie genre appeals to me, as far as fiction goes. I like the general all-around look of everything, the way the cities and roads and buildings are slouching over, becoming overgrown, and crumbling. I like the idea of looting the wreckage of the Old World. I love the fort-building. Like, if you give me a boarded-up, reinforced old stone and steel library with a few solar panels and some wind turbines, one that's packed full of books and supplies and a nice couch, and I'll just see you fuckers later, how about? Plus, I’m a huge fan of the whole Neo-Wild West/Mad Max genre mix too. It's not just the aesthetics, it's the style of high-noon quick-draw meets road wars. It's just too fun. And I'll admit it, a big part of the appeal is how most modern day problems–taxes, bills, jobs–are no longer a concern. That shit is so appealing to me, I can barely even quantify it. Really, the whole "stripping down to the bare essentials" is my jam. Not in real life, of course, I obviously prefer my dystopias on the big screen from the comfort of my own living room, something that sadly isn't as much of an option these days, but still, I enjoy the whole idea. Much like I enjoy the idea of machine-gunning large crowds of entitled assholes... again, in a fictional sense...

Ahem.

Now, is it fair to say that the post-apocalyptic zombie gerne is somewhat unavoidably rooted in the same toxic culture of rugged individualism, white flight, and resource hoarding that's irrevocably broken America to its very foundations? Sure, I'll cop to that. That's a fair assessment. Still… there's this romantic appeal to the whole thing that is fun to indulge so, what’re ya’ gonna do?

I’m into it.

And I'm not alone either. A lot of people are into it. Sure, the trend may have peaked, the wave of popularity may have crested and finally begun to reced, with a clear high tide mark visible to mark how much it once dominated, but still, after all this time, it's obvious that the genre shares traits with the zombies themselves, it plods ever on. This upsets some people, because they're not fans of the genre, but instead of just doing something else, they whine about it existing. Even stranger, these same kinds of people, who also happen to work in the industry, often seem to seek out zombie projects, and always for the sole reason of doing something "new" with zombies, and therein lies the problem. Y'see, the quest to “do something new with zombies” in ways both large and small is usually one of the main ways that you end up with shitty zombie movies and tv shows and books and comics.

In fact, this is one of the main reasons why The Walking Dead shows are all so terrible. Each show works so hard to come up with new words for zombies, simply because they seem to live in fear of their characters saying the word "zombie" and they all end up landing on unnatural sounding and inorganic-feeling nonsense like Biters or Geeks or Lurkers or Lamebrains or Stinkers or Empties, just a seemingly endless litany of pure stupidity, a bunch of shit that no one would actually choose to say, and none of which is as good as just using the term "Zombies" or even just "The Dead." These same stupid shows will work overtime trying to come up with new kinds of unique weapons for the various characters to use against the zombies, like switchblade spears, or a jagged broken-off machine gun barrel, or a stick with a triceratops horn tied to it with a shoestring, or what appeared to be a hand crank drill turned harpoon gun, where the harpoon is tied to the drill by a wire? None of which would be effective in any situation really, for obvious reasons, forget about actually using them against zombies. But perhaps worst of all, it's all so uncool too. Why not just use a club? Anyway, shit like this is so dumb and constant within this particular franchise, it feels like the various Walking Dead shows are in some kind of competition with one another to see who can be the dumbest one, and they’re all just so good at it, I could never pick a winner.

And that's not even getting into the myriad of examples of "smart" zombies, or zombie rom-coms, or "what if people tried to tame zombies" or blah blah blah, all of which are at best a pleasant gimmick for the first 20 minutes before losing what little luster they had, and ultimately proving yet again, that when it comes to the zombie apocalypse genre, this is a wheel that not only can't be reinvented, it just doesn't need to be.

But I have wandered from my point...

My point is, creators and filmmakers will often get lost up their own asses, trying to reinvent a wheel that can’t be reinvented, and the end result is always the same, they lose sight of the fact that their story isn't working. Then the whole thing falls apart. The formula is easy: leave the zombies as zombies, and focus on making your living characters the new and interesting aspect. That's it.

Okay, fine, that's a deceptively simple formula, and most creators fail because they're simply not good enough to tell a good story, so it doesn't matter what other decisions they make. But to the credit of writer/director Zak Hilditch, it's clear in We Bury The Dead that they tried to make the characters into the most interesting part, even as they're also trying to bring a new idea for zombies to the genre.

The inciting incident in this movie is when an electro-magnetic weapon explodes off the coast of Tasmania, killing almost the entire population of the island. While some people are vaporized in the explosion, most of the victims are actually felled by the magnetic pulse, their hearts stopped and their brains shorted out, so they all drop dead in the middle of meals and errands, or at their desks at work, or driving somewhere, etc. But then later on… randomly, some of the dead wake up, as their brains suddenly turn back on, at least... sort of. And this is all happening during a massive effort by the Australian government and an army of volunteers to bury all of the dead, so they're going house to house, searching everywhere for bodies, and occasionally finding some that are awake and stumbling about.

It’s a good set-up, right?

It's definitely a somewhat different approach to the classic idea. I like the idea behind the "scientific" reason for the zombies too, not to mention the potentially ripe political/social commentaty, so... nice job. This is a good example of a decent effort to bring something new to the table, all while not getting too lost in it.

But that said, the film also proves that these "new" gimmicks don't have any narrative sustainability either, as evidenced by the way the film eventually ends up relying on the same zombie apocalypse tropes that they always do. Why? Because like I said, this wheel simply can’t be reinvented. So again, everything depends on whether or not the characters who are alive, and their story, is interesting and well-told.

Which ends up being the film's main problem...

So…

The United States “accidentally” detonates an experimental Electromagnetic Pulse weapon, or an EMP, off the Eastern coast of Tasmania. The explosion destroys the city of Hobart, and shorts out the hearts and minds of the majority of the island's population not caught in the immediate blast area. This loses the hearts and minds of Australians when it comes to relations with the United States of America.

To make matters worse, some of the dead wake up, returning as empty and vacant-eyed shells, forcing the Australian government to "re-kill" the victims. Even worse than that, there are rumors that, for some of the newly re-awoken dead, the longer they are awake, the more violent they become.

In the wake of this tragedy, American physiotherapist Ava Newman—whose husband Mitch was on a business trip in the town of Woodbridge, on the southern side of the island, when the weapon detonated—arrives in Tasmania, one of many who have volunteered to be part of the effort to retrieve and dispose of the bodies, and to alert the soldiers whenever they need to re-kill any of the newly reawoken dead. Ava is assigned to the northern side of the island, far from Woodbridge, so she immediately begins to look for a way to slip past the military and head south, hoping against hope that Mitch is somehow still alive. Along with a man named Clay, another volunteer, they boost a motorcycle, abandon their unit, and drive across Tasmania.

Along the way, they do their best to avoid roving bands of trigger-happy military, the usual post-apocalyptic nutball loners driven insane with grief, and more than a few of the very angry undead.

Eventually, Ava makes it to Woodbridge, and the hotel where Mitch’s work conference was. There it is revealed that not only is Mitch dead–and did not wake up again–but Ava and Mitch’s marriage was dead too. Flashbacks reveal that their failure to conceive led Ava to have an affair, which then led to Mitch to doing the same while he was at the conference, right before the weapon detonated, with a coworker. Ava finds their bodies together.

Luckily, Clay is there with a shoulder for Ava to cry on, and a face to then kiss a bunch. For her penitent pilgrimage, Ava is then gifted with a dead woman’s live baby. After that, she and Clay, who was also running from being a shitty person with a failed family himself, create a new perfect nuclear family, and thus, fulfill their roles in society, I guess.

We Bury The Dead is about the journey of grief, about loss and death, and also undeath, obviously. As far as I can tell, it’s not adapted from a book. Watching this film, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was based off a book, not quite a YA book, but maybe a little. I don’t know why exactly I had this feeling, maybe it was due to how the dead and the undead both are presented in this film in a way that kind of reminded me of the book Zone One by Colson Whitehead. I don't know. Either way, despite it weirdly feeling otherwise, it was not based on a book.

At least, as far as I could find...

One little thing I really liked was how the whole thing, the detonating of the bomb, all the shit that happened after, all of the death, was entirely the fault of the United States. I especially liked how it was obvious that it was all done deliberatly too, like it was very clearly an illegal live test of some terrible new technology, all disguised as an accident. That was a nice little bit of commentary on the history of America's foreign policy around the world. I also liked how the news mentions that there was an effort on the part of the international community to lay all of this harm at the feet of the President too. That was a nice little extra bit of fantasy. Also, on top of the fun new "scientific" reason behind the zombies, I really liked the whole teeth grinding/jaw cracking thing that the angry dead do in the film. That was definitely great and really, really creepy. I also liked that the film uses Hertz by Amyl and the Sniffers during one scene.

That's just a good song.

I think what this film does best is the way it depicts the quiet landscape of a suddenly empty population center. That was really creepy, probably because it was somewhat reminiscent of deserted streets at the height of COVID. Especially as the cleanup crews are hauling out the bodies and laying them along the curb, wrapped in white sheets, waiting to be catalogued and then picked up, to eventually end up tumbled into a mass grave. These echoes of our current world added a nice edge to the film, as did Ava's obviously doomed quest. It gave everything a familiar feeling of a dystopian world carreening wildly off the rails, so to cope, a person sometimes clings to silly little small things in order to tamp down the terror. This is of course made all the more frightening because right now, just outside our windows, we are currently barreling headlong straight into an unknown, likely terrible future, one ravaged by COVID and flu and measles, all due to rabid MAHA white supremacist idiots destroying our access to vaccines and clean food, and basically just ruining future generations’ ability to confront future epidemics. And this is but one part of a jaw-droppingly stupidly terrible world of open hypocrisy and bald-faced evil all being wrought before our very eyes, a world where TV commercials feature known abusers and rapists like Mike Tyson shaming people for eating “processed” food, a job that was given to him by his fellow sexual assaulter, the wild-eyed and gravel-throated lunatic lesser son of greater sires, RFK jr., and all on the recommendation of another known sex pest and rapist, Brett Ratner, who is just off the White House sponsored money-laundering/bribery scheme “documentary” entitled Melania. All of which is so much more terrible because it is being done out in the open without a care in the world, just constantly highlighting the fact that they’re all nothing but rapists, bigots, losers, and Nazis, all the way down, top to bottom, from the halls of power to the people in the small towns and suburbs that put them there...

Anyway…

Another thing We Bury The Dead does well is the way that it mostly avoids portraying the dead as strictly monsters themselves. The film does an excellent job of reminding us that these creatures were once people just like us, that they were living their lives, and now they are victims of a terrible thing that was done to them by the real monsters in the story, those very same fuckers I was just talking about. The dead are still scary in this movie, of course, but it's nice how they're also sad, which really makes it clear that what happened to them was terrible, and they didn't deserve. So that also a nice commentary on the state of the world.

It's just too bad that, in the end, the film ultimately does nothing of value with any of this, or with any of the other things that it does well, but still... it should be said that the things that this film does do well are very well done.

So... good job... almost.

In the end, despite some good stuff, this is a film that is just too weirdly paced and unfocused, with a main story that can’t quite support itself, so after it sputters past its climax, it just kind of stumbles on to its end, overstaying it's welcome despite its 95 minute runtime. The sad truth is, We Bury The Dead really needed to decide if it wanted to be a classic zombie movie, or if it wanted to be a metaphor for grief and loss, because trying to be both only turned out to mean that one of those aims was constantly getting in the way of the other.

Sadly, this is a pass.