We Bury the Dead - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

We Bury the Dead



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
I genuinely feel bad for Daisy Ridley at this point. She’s not the worst actress in the world, and she got off to an AMAZING start thanks to her being cast in the sequel Star Wars trilogy, only for her career to fall off a sharp cliff BECAUSE of said trilogy. I’m not going to wax eloquent and whine about the foibles that was the sequel trilogy, but needless to say that by the time the third film came out the general public had sort of turned her into a Jake Lloyd or Jar Jar Binks situation. She effectively became one of the many excuses why the trilogy was not that great. And every time Ridley has tried to restart her career post Star Wars the poor girl has landed flat on her face. And to be fair, while she isn’t the greatest actress on earth, but she’s not BAD either. It just seems that her career choices are now rather limited, and the roles she can get never do a good job of backing her up and making her look good. And while We Bury the Dead is a step in the right direction, the movie has its own problems that hamper her from actually shining or even just looking good enough at the same time.

We Bury the Dead is strangely both a slow-burn drama and hyper frenetic simultaneously. The pacing and FEEL of the film is decidedly slow and plodding, yet the film launches us from plot point to plot point at breakneck speed, barely slowing down long enough for the viewer to catch their breath (yeah, it’s a strange feeling). Anyways, the film opens up with a veritable fire hose of exposition, cluing us in to the fact that the United States military has detonated an experimental pulse bomb off the coast of Tasmania, Australia, killing 500,000 people in the non irradiated blast radius. Those outside of the initial blast radius ended up deformed and brain dead, effectively terminated with grotesque mutations and deformations all over their body. BUUUUT, some of these people seem to regain motor functions and come back to life as “zombies” (even though the term is never uttered).

Now the Australian government is sending in cleanup teams consisting of volunteers to do body retrieval, and supported by the Aussie military in case the ones who have “risen” crop up. One of the body retrieval volunteers happens to be Ava Newman (Daisy Ridley), who is only volunteering because her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) is one of the missing people outside the initial blast radius as he was attending a renewable energy conference in the vicinity. Hoping to find her husband, she travels over the Aussie countryside with fellow volunteer Clay (Brenton Thwaites, whom I barely recognized) in hopes of finding him alive (even in an undead way).

As much as the concept is cool, and Ridley isn’t half bad as Ava, the film itself is sort of a mishmashed hodge podge of ideas that only get partially realized before director/writer Zak Hilditch jumps to the next one. The opening bit of the film where things are slowly setup for the zombie apocalypse is quite good. Sure we get inundated with an exposition dump, but watching Ava and Clay search around for the survivors is kind of fascinating. But it’s where Ava and Clay go AWOL that things start to slip. Their trip being cut short by Riley the Aussie infantry grunt is the first crack in the armor, with an interesting sub concept that gets cut short way too early. Only for the next few sequences doing the very same thing. We get introduced to Mitch, only for that to get truncated quickly, and then Clay and Ava’s little resolution at the end follows the same pattern. Introduce the two of them, only for the movie to end without any resolution.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of like about We Bury the Dead. The concept of a zombie apocalypse starting with government interference isn’t anything new, but the gritty and grungy take on the world coming to grips with it is rather nice. Ridley and Thwaites do a solid job together. It’s just that neither actor is given much to work with, because as soon as things start to mesh, Zak Hilditch jerks them out of that moment and introduces entirely new concepts. Which ends up turning the film into a push/pull scenario where the good parts and the bad parts are actively fighting each other.




Rated R for strong violent content, gore, language and brief drug use.




Video:

I’m actually kind of sad that we don’t get a domestic 4K release of We Bury the Dead as it is slated for multiple releases in 4K overseas in a couple of months, with absolutely ZERO hint of a 4K release for the states. But I digress, we gotta work with what we have. The film is a decidedly low budget film with a digital shoot (no idea on what cameras used, just that it was listed as a digital package on IMDB, otherwise I can’t find a whole lot of information on the subject) but it looks rather solid. The film employs a heavy red and browned look that makes everything look a bit gritty and grungy. Colors are warmed and dulled at the same time, giving us this ruddy and hazy look that just works for the dreamy concepts of the film. There’s moments of blue push in the darker shots (such as in Riley’s house or in the barn), and blacks can sometimes get a bit of a milky look. Fine details are generally good, but like the blacks, they tend to get a bit hazy at times. But overall a solid looking image with some striking contrasts that makes this entire watch rather unique.








Audio:

The disc comes with 4 audio tracks, with 2 of them in English, and 2 in the original Japanese (5.1 DTS-HD MA and Dolby Digital 2.0). Naturally I tend to lean towards the Japanese audio mix for the much better voice acting, but both mixes are sonically identical to each other outside of the dialog stem. Surround activity is very immersive, with the copious battles and musical score engagements lighting up the non mains. Mains get a good hefty workout as well, and the LFE is nice and punchy. Maybe not overly aggressive, but still good enough (especially in the final Shizuka battle).










Extras:

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Final Score: ​

Good news, while the case for the film advertised that we were only getting 5.1 Dolby Digital lossy audio, the disc actually has both a 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD MA track on board. And I honestly have no complaints about the 5.1 track at all. It’s not a rocking action track, but rather one that survives off of ambiance and tightly dialed in dialogue complimenting the Australian landscape. There ARE some stand out moments (such as that small bass bomb at the beginning of the movie) and a few rumbles with the cars, but overall this is a nicely nuanced “ambiance” track.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, Grant Sputore, Mark Coles Smith
Directed by: Zak Hilditch
Written by: Zak Hilditch
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DTS-HD MA 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Vertical Entertainment
Rated: NR
Runtime: 120 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: March 17th, 2026

Recommendation: Interesting, But Flawed