There's a number of things that a zombie film does, apart from providing jump scares and satisfying people's need for horror. They can critique society, such as Dawn of the Dead where the characters hide in a mall, the institution of our mindless consumption, or Train to Busan which highlights how co-operation trumps self interest as a response to class inequality. When they're not a metaphor for social ills, they can also operate as field to play out our fantasies of the old order collapsing and what might spring from the new, such as such as The Walking Dead, which imagines the collapse of modern institutions and explores how new forms of community, leadership, and morality emerge in their place - even if they constantly collapse and must begin again (thus the show must go on).

But zombie films are also about how we interact with death, and our relationship with the dead. Is the boundary between human and corpse is as absolute as we’d like to believe? Do the dead retain any of the qualities that make the living human, such as empathy and love? What qualities remain in the dead such as emotional feeling?

'We Bury The Dead' is the latest zombie flick to grace my television, and if you didn't know before, I'm always eagerly waiting any kind of zombie film, this more so as it's set in Tasmania (albeit filmed in Western Australia, which was slightly disappointing). The US has attacked Tasmania in a secret weopon's trial resulting in the lost of all life on our apple isle - including pademelons, which I found disappointing, as I find them terrifying in real life, with their tattered ears and fleas and way of looking at you as you cook a camp meal.

Sorry, I digress. Back to the teams sent in to clean up Tasmania, finding the dead and burying them. Given the scale of the clean up, volunteers are brought in from the mainland and they begin their sweep from north to south, as Hobart is still burning, likely from explosions created from the lack of human attendance. Ava, played by Daisy Ridley, is one of the volunteers, albeit with an ulterior motive like many: to find a loved one and bury them, both literally and figuratively, as we must when some one dies. We must bury their loss, our dreams and regrets. Told in a series of flashbacks, Ava's relationship with Mitch shows what emotional horror one must live through when someone we love is taken from us suddenly, with no chance for closure.

Have a quick look at the trailer:

This is where the movie immediately falls down for me - firstly, I'm disappointed that the US motives and actions weren't explored more fully - and a lost opportunity to explore the rage people must feel toward Americans in general for what amounts to genocide, with obvious parellels to Israel and US involvement in the flattening of Palestine (this is framed as an 'accident' - oh like the accidental killing of the kids in a school in Iran? Sorry-for-getting-political-not-sorry).

Secondly, why they didn't vet volunteers with view to understanding what psychological suffering would ensue finding their dead son at a dinner table or daughter snorting coke with bikies in a shed (people died in the exact pose they were in - including yogis in child's pose, which wouldn't be a bad way to go) - what a shit show. Perhaps the scale of the destruction meant they simply needed the human resources. Some are there for redemption, like the very good looking tradie whose role in the film is to help her move from north to south, where she knows her husband is at a retreat in Woodbridge.

I was also disappointed, as they moved through the landscape, that this wasn't exactly the Tassie I would have liked. They did a good job of mimicking it and it would be good enough for international audiences but I wanted to see the stunning landscapes of Tassie and imagine the reality of an apocalypse there - including pademelons and quolls.

Yet there were some novel scenes - the poignancy of a re-animated (or 'online' dead, as the military called them) motorhome driver burying his family. These moved my sister - perhaps me less so, who has read and watched a lot of better moments in the zombie canon, such as 'The Girl with all the Gifts' or 'The Reapers are the Angels'. My sister was also taken by how Ava is under threat more by the living than the dead, but that is quite a trope with all zombie films. One just needs to be alert and aware and handy with a baseball bat with the undead. The living can do a good job of pretending to be human, but can be cruel, vindicative, self interested, greedy or just plain fucked up. In this way I found 'We Bury the Dead' to be more formulaic than interesting, including the ending.

Still, it must be hard to get funding and support for a zombie film - they're certainly an acquired taste 🧟 - although this film wasn't so much about zombies, but our relationships with grief and what makes us human.

Score? Jamie was irritated and doesn't like zombies and gave it a 5.5 🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟 and I found it watchable and interesting enough for a review, and gave it 6.5 🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟, although I'm not sure I would watch it again. My sister gave it an 🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟 8, but she doesn't understand the genre.

Plot spoiler #1: The birth of a baby from a zombie isn't new either. In the recent 28 Years Later, an uninfected human is born to a woman infected with the rage virus. However in most zombie flicks, if a pregnant zombie or pre zombie (bitten) mother is infected, the baby will become a zombie too. To me this was a bit of a problem, showing the film's inability to explore the rationale behind the 'online' dead - or what we'd think of as zombies. Why do some reanimate and become frightening, and others protect their babies and dig holes for the dead? Is that just a mirror of human nature, like some people are just evil, and others will always follow their 'good' human nature to protect and nurture others?

Plot spoiler #2: I loved the scene with Ava and her tradie side kick in the pool at the resort. One great thing about any apocalypse is one can take advantage of having the entire world for free - including drugs and posh resorts. I would have jumped his bones for sure. Who cares about your dead husband you cheated on and that you found dead in a room with another women? Live it up, baby! Zombie films should be sexier.

Plot spoiler #3: Well done for the casting of indigenous actor Mark Coles Smith - gorgeous. Great to see an indigenous actor on screen. His character could have been better developed, rather than a threat from the outset. He was there for closure as well, and grief makes people do some pretty fucked up things. My sympathy was definitely with him. It did make me think a series would have been great as there was a lot of characters that deserved their stories to be fleshed out, so to speak.

With Love,

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