3 weeks ago
14
FILM
We Bury the Dead ★★★
(M) 95 minutes
One of the recurring strengths of Australian cinema is in the kind of apocalyptic imagery that remains grounded in the everyday. George Miller set the pattern, in the original Mad Max especially.
Among the filmmakers who have followed in his wake is the gifted Zak Hilditch, who had his first significant success in 2013 with the entertainingly hectic These Final Hours, a grimly plausible vision of the mostly petty and destructive ways the citizens of Perth choose to spend their last day on earth.
Hilditch has since directed two features in the US, but We Bury the Dead marks his return to Australia and to apocalypse as a theme, though in this case the destruction is more contained. Where These Final Hours wiped out the entire planet, here the carnage is confined to Tasmania, where the entire population has been wiped out in a freak accident caused by the US military choosing to detonate an experimental electromagnetic weapon just off the east coast.
In the aftermath, volunteers are encouraged to come over from the mainland and assist in the grim task of disposing of the half-million corpses left lying around. Ava (Daisy Ridley), the film’s heroine, is among those who signs on, though given she’s a Yank herself, there’s some doubt about whether her presence is welcome under the circumstances (anti-US protests are glimpsed on TV, though this is one of many issues the film doesn’t have time to dwell on).
The truth is that Ava isn’t being public-spirited: her real concern is with finding out what’s become of her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), seen in flashback, who was at a conference south of Hobart when the catastrophe occurred. There are also rumours that some of the corpses have been coming back to life, although this isn’t universally regarded as a welcome development.
Yes, this is another zombie movie, a genre that shows no sign of fading away, even though zombies in themselves are among the least versatile characters around. The zombies aren’t the whole story here, and not necessarily the biggest threat Ava has to face.
To start with, there’s the question of how far she can trust the men who accompany her over the course of her journey: first a sweary fellow volunteer from Melbourne (Brenton Thwaites), then a soldier (Mark Coles Smith) weighed down by grief of his own.
Grief as a subject for horror cinema has become a cliche, but We Bury the Dead at its best is getting at something more specific: a film about mourning as a process which is public and private at once, which people participate in collectively while suffering separate, private feelings of loss.
As for what exactly is being mourned here, the allegorical possibilities are rich enough to allow some freedom to pick and choose – though it would be hard for any Australian viewer to overlook the fact that the arrival of European settlers in Tasmania was, for the original inhabitants, a literally apocalyptic event.
Lacking the glee or the momentum of These Final Hours, We Bury the Dead is more plainly at the elevated end of the genre spectrum, employing stately baroque music at key junctures without quite enough irony (a song by Amyl and the Sniffers is more effectively placed).
But the strongest moments are those which bring the apocalyptic scenario down to earth, so it becomes imaginable as a situation to be dealt with on a mundane level just like anything else: the military personnel lined up on the airport tarmac to collect mobile phones from new arrivals, or Thwaites mumbling “righto” as he catches his first glimpse of the living dead.
We Bury the Dead is in cinemas from February 5.
