How ‘We Bury The Dead’ Falls Flat

Actress Daisy Ridley may best be known for her role as Rey in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, but she has appeared in countless movies spanning a wide range of genres. She appeared in the 2017 mystery film “Murder on the Orient Express” and played the titular Ophelia in the 2018 film of the same name. She had a lead role in the 2021 science fiction film “Chaos Walking” and played Gertrude Ederle in the 2024 biological drama “Young Woman and the Sea.” In January, she stepped into a zombie horror film when “We Bury The Dead” was released in theaters.

WARNING: Spoilers below.

The movie opens with text across the screen that reads, “Somehow, Palpatine returned…”

No, but could you imagine? One would have thought that Ridley would have had enough of zombies after she defeated a resurrected Palpatine in 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” which was a movie so terrible that Disney pulled the plug on all future theatrical releases until “The Mandalorian & Grogu” – a spin-off of a three-season TV show on Disney+ – hits theaters later this month.

But “We Bury The Dead” isn’t so much a zombie movie as it is a commentary on grief and closure. The movie opens after the United States accidentally detonates an experimental weapon off the Eastern coast of Tasmania. Considering the current state of politics, this is a funny bit in a movie that provides very little comedy.

Speaking of funny, it was definitely an interesting choice to have Daisy Ridley’s character, Ava, play a “yank,” as she’s often referred to throughout the film, with a lackluster American accent that doesn’t go over as well as one might think. Whether American, British, or even Australian, where she’s from doesn’t have much bearing on the film.

Ava travels to the area as part of a body retrieval unit and is partnered with Clay, another volunteer who, we later find out, is volunteering to prove to his wife and daughter that he’s not as selfish as they think he is. But Ava has an ulterior motive for joining the program: her husband Mitch works in “renewable energy,” and a company retreat put him right in the detonation zone.

I don’t know what American renewable energy companies send their employees to Tasmania for a work retreat, but here we are.

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Regardless, Ava is desperate to find him. He’s probably dead, but there are rumors that some of the dead are becoming undead, although they mostly just stare and grind their teeth in a way that would make a dentist cringe. The zombies only become speedy and violent when the plot needs them to, and let’s be honest, the plot doesn’t really need them to. Most of the time, they don’t end up doing anything besides staring and gnashing their teeth.

Clay and Ava get separated on her quest to get to her husband’s hotel when a soldier – Riley – shows up. Riley locks Ava in a room for hours while he “questions” Clay and then comes back to tell her that Clay ran away. Clay does seem like the kind of guy who would run away, but Riley also seems like the kind of guy who would take him out back and shoot him, so either way, Ava’s not in a great position.

And she gets in a worse position when Riley offers her a lift. With little other option, she gets in his jeep, only for him to drive her to his wife’s childhood home and cook her dinner. He then asks Ava to put on Katie’s clothes and perfume and dance with him before he will take her to her destination. For whatever reason, Ava agrees to this. Things get creepy, and then Riley gets expectedly violent when he realizes Ava didn’t take off her wedding ring, as requested.

She rushes upstairs only to find that his zombified wife is pregnant and chained to the bed. She escapes out the window only to find even more undead chained up together in his barn. He claims the dead who come back have “unfinished business” and that his wife came back because she still plans to give birth to their child.

Yup. Okay.

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As expected, Ava kills him and escapes. Katie somehow also got unshackled from the bed and makes her way outside, somehow, but Ava just bolts out of there and continues her quest to find her husband. She eventually reaches the hotel where he’s staying and finds him in his room – I guess this is the only and only hotel in the world where rooms don’t have locked doors? – only to find evidence that her husband had been having an affair.

Flashbacks scattered throughout the movie hinted that they had been having marital problems, but it isn’t until Clay shows up – somehow – that Ava explains that she grew frustrated after being unable to conceive a child, and so she had an affair right before he left on this business trip. It’s not clear how long he’s been having an affair for, or if it was a one-night stand, but either way, Ava’s pretty upset that he won’t become undead and apparently doesn’t consider her “unfinished business.”

She and Clay get drunk and have a pool party – because why not? – which is interrupted when a zombie comes in. She smashes its head open with what looks to be a wine bottle, which is the bloodiest she gets throughout the entire film. She later wakes up in bed next to Clay and decides to give Mitch a ship burial after getting inspired by a painting of a Viking burial on the wall.

On their trip back north, they stop their car when they see Katie standing in the middle of the road. Ava sees her bloody clothes and rushes off to some stone ruins, where she hears the sounds of a baby crying. That’s right. Katie gave birth in the middle of a field, then stopped in the middle of the roadway, hoping someone would stop, get out of their car, and find her bundle of joy, who is somehow completely healthy.

Zombie Katie just walks off down the road, and Ava picks up the baby, seemingly delighted that she’s finally getting to be a mom, although it’s not really clear whether she wanted to be a mom or just to start a family with Mitch. The flashbacks only hint that the tensions in their marriage were due to her infertility, and it’s not clear how much Ava actually wanted to be a parent.

Maybe it’s supposed to end on a hopeful note, but it really just falls flat. After initially describing it to a friend as a “weird, weird, weird, movie,” I did what anyone would do and typed the name of the film into Google, where I came across a few Reddit boards asking, “WTH did I just watch?”

Honestly? Same. As a “Star Wars” fan, I was drawn in by Daisy Ridley. As a zombie movie fan, I was drawn in by the premise. It seemed very similar to Colson Whitehead’s 2011 novel “Zone One,” which follows a character named Mark Spitz clearing the last “straggler” zombies from NYC after a pandemic.

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This was not that. “We Bury The Dead” seems more like a test of what people will go through in order to find closure, but it’s muddled by the ending and the reveal that Mitch is also having an affair. She cheated on him, he cheated on her, and then he died, and she risked her life trying to find a man who she knew was already dead.

The movie would have been better if it had featured Ava walking into the hotel room, finding Mitch’s body, and then slowly closing the door behind her before the screen faded to black. Does he reanimate? Does he stay dead? Does she get closure?

It would be incredibly ironic for a film about a character finding closure to then not give the audience the same. I’m a fan of ambiguous endings, but if 2025’s “A House of Dynamite” taught me anything, it is that most people are not.

The current ending doesn’t provide much closure, but at least Ava does find a baby. Does she head back to America with it? Does she stay with Clay? And how did he actually give Riley the slip and then somehow make it to the same hotel about ten minutes after Ava when they were separated for days?

“We Bury The Dead” doesn’t give you any answers. It just buries them.

Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, and Mark Coles Smith star in Zak Hilditch’s zombie horror “We Bury The Dead,” which is now streaming on Hulu.