3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): We Bury the Dead

2025, Zak Hilditch (These Final Hours) -- download

I swore I saw These Final Hours but maybe I am more remembering that Kent did, as the plot doesn't sound familiar. Hilditch returns with another end-of-the-world, but more the end of "a" world as the US naval vessel "accidentally" sets of an experimental atomic/nuclear weapon off the coast of Hobart, Tasmania. Who isn't killed by the initial blast dies from the actual purpose of the weapon -- a pulse of energy kills every living thing it passes through, as it flows inland. 

This movie isn't about the US nor the consequences. This movie is about a single woman, Ava (Daisy Ridley, Cleaner), an American herself, who joins the "body retrieval" process as the Australian government is overwhelmed in the grim recovery & identification of the dead. She has volunteered because her husband had come to Tasmania on a corporate retreat, and they had recently had an argument; she needs closure. There is also the unsettling fact that while the pulse caused instantaneous brain death, it is known that some undetermined time later, some people "come back online", essentially awakening as shambling, teeth-clacking zombies inside their decaying, very dead bodies. Obviously she's a little off-kilter if finding her husband in this state is her goal. There is also the challenge in that the resort where the retreat was taking place is in an area that is currently off-limits, too close to the still-burning city of Hobart.

As readers here know, I am a "zombie movie guy". These days, I prefer when movies explore the genre beyond survival-horror-action, even if that is often the most exciting of the story structures. This movie never intended on being "exciting" and I am not surprised by the spate of 1-star reviews, by audiences, at RT. For me, the draw was the "clean up" after a mass-casualty event, something that is not / cannot generally be covered in virus or zombie-apocalypse movies because... well, everyone is dead. Alas, the movie only kicks off with that idea, the elevator pitch, while most of the rest of the movie is two-fold. 

One, the road trip through the hellscape that is south Tasmania, from relatively safe protected-by-soldiers areas of the island, to the proper wasteland littered with bodies and wreckage, ending in the juxtaposition-ing of a resort-spa populated by only the dead. which allows the character study of Ava and why she is so desperate to get to where her husband most clearly died. 

And two, the zombies themselves -- who or what is coming back online, what remains of the person who was originally there, if the brain was entirely wiped. The soldiers mollify the clean-up crews saying they are slow, plodding and harmless. But we, regular viewers, know how far that will go. Soon after leaving the safe areas, Ava, and her side-kick Clay (Brenton Thwaites, Titans), discover some definitely faster, angrier undead full of clacking teeth and malevolent intent. A lone soldier (Mark Coles Smith, Hard Rock Medical) they bump into explains that the longer they are online, the more agitated the undead act, as if tortured by their own returned existence. And yet, something of what they were does remain, as they try to return to whatever they were doing before the bomb went off. The existential horror of being aware inside a very dead and decaying body (its been weeks) is palpable, and yet, to extend the horror, this is what Ava was hoping for -- to find her husband, to find him "returned" and demand answers to questions about their relationship. The dead may have unfinished business, but so does Ava.

Many of the one-star reviews complained how the movie had no proper ending. I am not sure what they were looking for -- Ava was there to confront her husband, corpse or otherwise. And she did. And had her closure, for better or for worse. We all knew it was a fool's errand, no matter what she found. She would not find solace, not find forgiveness except within herself. And then the movie gives a little melodramatic tacked-on sub-plot involving the bumped-into-soldier and his ... wife. She was very much pregnant when the bomb went off. She is very much pregnant as the broken man ties her to the bed, hoping for his own sort of closure. The shock of the final scenes, where a baby is born from a corpse, a baby that should have been its own form of corpse but is warm and squalling, is yet another level of horror. Its not meant to answer any questions, just leave us with more.

Final thoughts? I was left with many, and the conflict between movie-making (telling a story, giving us plot) and the world-making of a different, new type of zombie apocalypse. The character development, the study of a woman in grief is at least managed but I felt it should have been harsher. I did like that this one made me think -- they are not just the mechanical zombies of most movies, with only death on their mind. And the horror of a callous US government is so obviously very current. I wonder how far these movies go with quiet-drama instead of full-on horror, and why.