My first film at the Melbourne International Film Festival for 2025 was We Bury the Dead—a fitting kick-off for my couple of days of movie-viewing at the festival. I had just travelled up from Tasmania to watch a film in which the United States accidentally lets off an experimental weapon off the coast of Hobart, basically killing everyone on the island, and leaving some in a brain-dead zombie state.

American women Ava (Daisy Ridley) has volunteered to come help out with the efforts to bury and find the half-dead in Tassie. But her real reason for volunteering is that her husband, Mitch (Matt Whelan), was near Hobart on a work retreat when the incident went down. Dead or brain-dead, Ava wants to find her husband.

From the outset of We Bury The Dead, the film does a great job of using its small budget to build a contained post-apocalyptic setting. Some of the film was shot on location in Tasmania, and as a local, the film does a good job of showcasing some of the island’s beauty and its small-town nature. I found it mildly amusing that Ava planned to escape the north and travel south to Hobart to find her husband. As an American, she naturally writes out the distance in miles, which makes the couple of hours in a vehicle it would take to travel south.

Ava meets Clay (Brenton Thwaites) while on body-searching duty. He’s a rough-tough true-blue. Probably a tradie back on the mainland. He doesn’t seem like the type to volunteer for this sort of gig, yet here he is, with baggage to be untraveled later for sure. Ava and Clay, over a montage, break into homes in Tassies north, find bodies, drag them out to a truck and so forth.

Everyone helping is given flares to call in the army if they encounter any of the zombie-like creatures that have come back to life. The first time they find one, it’s a creepy discovery, but there is the voice of typical scares in this genre. It’s sadder. The body stands motionless; Ava stares into its eyes searching for any signs of life, preparing for what could be her husband’s state. Unfortunately, as the film progresses, director and writer Zak Hilditch does add in some more atypical zombie moments. Although some elements, such as an agitated state that sends the creatures into a disturbing, teeth-grinding state, are present, these moments often feel like the writer struggling with his true intentions for the film, as seen earlier in its runtime.

We Bury The Dead is at its core a film about dealing with grief, and the zombies are just something thrown in to almost add some more action to the film. Especially once they start attacking. The film is at its best when Mark Coles Smith enters for a segment playing an army officer, also dealing with his grief. He’s the highlight of the film, delivering a truely standout performance. Unfortunately, Daisy Ridley never gets to produce the same amount of character work, but she’s not given it on the page.

Much like Zak Hilditch’s 2013 film, These Final Hours, this is a film about grief set around an apocalypse. Whereas These Final Hours was about what someone does in the impending doom, We Bury the Dead is about what we do when it’s too late to talk to someone anymore.

[Dylan attended a screening of We Bury the Dead thanks to the Melbourne International Film Festival]