Audiences looking for a different take on survival thrillers and disaster movies may be pleasantly surprised by Zak Hilditch’s We Bury the Dead. Likewise for horror hounds who have been thirsty for crushingly bleak imports from Australia. This is a stark, sick and slick flick.

Daisy Ridley has gone from space (the Star Wars franchise) to the sea (Young Woman and the Sea) and, now, to sullen ground zero after a botched military weapon test levels a large population of Australia. Ava (Ridley) answers a call for volunteers to assist with the corpses left behind by the destruction. But, she hopes to use this opportunity to reunite with her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan). A notion of good will, however, turns into a high stakes game of strategy when zone boundaries are implemented, preventing Ava from travelling to find Mitch. Additional developments also assure that select cadavers are becoming sentient, unpredictable, and violent. Ava and her assigned volunteer partner Clay (Brenton Thwaites) decide to forego the boundaries and hit the road themselves.

Resembling the structure, look, and general tension of 2024’s Civil War, We Bury the Dead manipulates and uses the formula of a “road movie” to critique the confusion that’s triggered by inexplicable disasters. For the most part, the behaviours exhibited in Hilditch’s movie are chillingly accurate. The half-dead performances are also very scary as they resort to staring and grinding their teeth, exercising the idea that less is more when it comes to these bit parts.

Other times, as expected with Australian horror, the reactions are meant to emphasize a twisted gag or sardonic apathy. Clay, having been written and performed as too much of a surly rogue, feels like he’s only present to break up the atmosphere with his short fuse and shorter vocabulary. Luckily, as hard as Thwaites tries to steal the movie, the dramatic elements outshine the dark humour; earning We Bury the Dead a solid recommendation.

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie