Daisy Ridley leads this low-key drama set amid a man-made “zombie” pandemic.
PLOT: After a army experiment gone flawed, a lot of the inhabitants of Australia has been killed by a chemical weapons discharge. But, among the many useless, among the victims have come again “online” the place they’re not precisely residing, and never precisely useless. An American girl (Daisy Ridley) looking for her husband volunteers to be a part of a physique retrieval unit however quickly goes off the grid.
REVIEW: It’s powerful to make an authentic zombie flick (though hopefully that may quickly change). Ever since 28 Days Later reinvigorated the style again in 2003, we’ve been inundated with film after film, to not point out a whole lot of episodes of The Strolling Lifeless (and its spin-offs) and others. Into the fray comes the Australian We Bury the Lifeless, which is an try and make an elevated, real looking exploration of the style. On this one, the undead are by no means known as “zombies” and are in contrast to any we’ve seen on movie earlier than. These undead victims aren’t significantly vicious, nor have they got a starvation for human flesh. In addition they can’t infect survivors. As a substitute, once they’re again “online” (which is how the movie describes them), they’re comparatively passive and generally have tiny remnants of who they was once baked into them.
Daisy Ridley performs Ava, an American girl whose husband, Mitch (Matt Whelan) was away on an organization retreat in Tasmania when an American chemical weapons check went awry and killed hundreds of thousands. She volunteers to be a part of a physique retrieval unit in order that she will have some measure of closure, however quickly, she convinces one other volunteer, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), to take her to a quarantined space so she will attempt to discover the physique of her husband.
A lot of the film is a street odyssey by the contaminated components of Australia. There’s little or no in the best way of horror, with it extra centered on the human side. Ridley’s Ava is riddled with guilt over how, within the days earlier than her beloved husband went on his fateful journey, their relationship had begun to curdle for some cause. She’s hoping that if she finds him, and he’s again “online,” she will help him have a extra dignified finish than what she’s seen, with the army merely taking pictures anybody who occurs to return again.
Ridley does an excellent job of evoking the character’s profound grief over each her husband’s loss of life and her want to seek out out what occurred to him. Brenton Thwaites steals scenes as Clay, the party-boy Australian who spends his nights hooking up with different volunteers and doing medicine to take care of the trauma of what they see daily.
As a drama, We Bury the Lifeless works nicely, with the Australian countryside superbly photographed and the film sporting an efficient soundtrack by digital musician Clay. But, the movie goes awry at occasions, with writer-director Zak Hilditch unable to keep away from falling prey to some cliches of the style. One of many worst offenders is a prolonged apart that includes an intense soldier, Mark Coles Smith’s Riley, who appears wound too tight to be sane and is quickly revealed to be a complete psychopath. It’s such a well-recognized trope of the style that when it hits, not solely is it completely predictable, but it surely’s additionally disappointing, because it makes the film, for a great chunk of its operating time, nothing you haven’t seen earlier than.
As such, We Bury the Lifeless, for all its ambitions, can’t assist however sometimes really feel like a retread. With a lot zombie content material on the market, it’s very troublesome so as to add something new to the style. Inevitably, this film doesn’t handle to beat the familiarity of the style, however even nonetheless, it’s principally entertaining for a lot of its operating time due to the ace technical packaging, and good performances from Ridley and Thwaites. It’s stable however unspectacular.
