PREMISE
After a catastrophic military disaster, the dead don’t just rise – they hunt. Ava searches for her missing husband, but what she finds is far more terrifying.
THE GOOD STUFF
DAISY RIDLEY- Ridley is an actress who deserves better things. This is the third film in a row (woman in the sea, cleaner) where she is drastically outperforming the material given. And this is also the third film in a row where she proves she has a bit of range and, justifiably, could be considered very underrated. She does an outstanding job of making the audience feel every bit of exhaustion that this character (and should) radiate by the end of the film. Ridley is a good enough actress to lend merit to the out-of-left-field goofiness and the heartfelt moments in equal parts.
A DIFFERENT SPIN- This movie does something that zombie movies actually haven’t done up until this point: It makes every interaction with the zombie a roll of the dice. Not to say that there are nice zombies in this film, but there are zombies who want to mind their own business and are just wondering what you’re about to do.
There are plenty of instances where a zombie will legitimately have the drop on someone, and they will not respond. They’re just infected people who are not motivated to kill. Could this be the most realistic synopsis of what would happen during an actual zombie apocalypse? I would like to think so. It’s such a simple thing to adjust that it makes the entire proceedings that much more fascinating.
THE TECHNICAL STUFF- Not necessarily sure what the budget of this film is, but it looks spectacular on all fronts. The zombies are not enhanced with CGI and appear more like scarred humans who have been drained of all blood rather than monsters. The cinematography is excellent. The music is on point, the sense of dread is heavy and palpable. At least on the production side, there’s no cheesiness here. This film is doing as much as it can with what it has. And that’s very respectable.
THE BAD STUFF
STORY DETAILS- We bury the dead is a film with a modest budget, I’m guessing, so it makes sense why this story isn’t fully developed as a bigger-budget horror film would be. We don’t necessarily get the “how” in the events that have happened in this movie. I guess that helps with pacing. I guess it gives the events of this movie a little bit more immediacy. But when you find yourself asking about the virus that actually caused the events, you’re simply given the words “military experiment gone wrong,” and that’s all you’re going to get. There’s no world-building here, just a bunch of characters instinctively reacting to life-endangering situations, and flashbacks that don’t necessarily help any character development.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE F****** CRUNCHING- I understand that when it comes to zombie films, every filmmaker wants to have their zombies do a particular thing that other zombies haven’t done in films before, whether it be an aesthetic look or behavioral trait. For some inexplicable reason, the creative choice with the zombies in WE BURY THE DEAD was made to have these zombies loudly grind their teeth, and with that came a snapping and cracking noise that is nauseating to even think of.
Imagine every bone-cracking sound effect you’ve ever heard in a horror movie, but slowed way down to an excruciating extent. We see the zombies slowly grinding the teeth right out of their own jaws. In some cases, there are prolonged silent shots of the zombies that don’t need to be there, that leave you with extended mixes of the cracking noise. There’s even a shot where the human characters are in an automobile with the window rolled up, and we see them from inside the vehicle… But for some reason, we still have to play the f****** cracking teeth noises of the zombies that are outside, regardless of where the camera’s POV is. I hated this deeply.
**************
I can’t help but to compare this to the recently released 28 years later. Believe it or not, it’s a tough call to decide which is the better film. On the technical side, both films deliver good performances, especially from the lead characters, deliver on the gore, and neither overdoes it for the sake of shock value.
I suppose the judgment of how good 28 years later is will depend on how it connects with its direct sequel later on this month. Maybe it’s a tremendous lead-in to a lot of payoffs from the multiple, multiple storytelling inefficiencies it had, but we will see. We bury the dead, however, is a one-off. A movie with a beginning, middle, and end. I can say this is the superior film because of the lack of continuity/storytelling errors compared to 28 YEARS LATER. There’s no real b******* in this film, and that alone is the difference.Â
WE BURY THE DEAD is in theaters now
