We kicked things off with some surprise over how much new horror content is coming out this early in the year. Meaghan and Arthur weren’t expecting January to be this busy.
The film on the table this time is We Bury the Dead, which had its premiere at SXSW 2025 and is now getting a wide North American release. Meaghan noted it’s weird that Australia, the setting of the film, is getting it later than the US. That set the tone; things felt slightly off from the get-go.
They read the official synopsis, which was disappointingly vague and misleading. According to IMDb: “After a catastrophic military disaster, the dead don’t just rise, they hunt. Ava searches for her missing husband, but what she finds is far more terrifying.” Sounds ominous, but it doesn’t really capture what the movie is actually about.
The story follows Ava (played by Daisy Ridley), who heads to Tasmania after a U.S. military weapon test kills 500,000 people and leaves some of the dead returning with cognitive abilities. Ava’s husband, Mitch, was in Tasmania for a work retreat when the disaster struck.
She volunteers for a military-adjacent cleanup crew under the pretense of helping, but she’s really there to search for him. What unfolds is less of a zombie apocalypse and more of a grief-driven journey through emotional trauma, peppered with the occasional undead chase.
Horror That Tries to Be More Than Horror
From early on, Arthur was clear; he didn’t love the movie. He wanted a zombie movie, and instead got a metaphor-heavy drama about loss and relationships.
Meaghan didn’t mind the metaphor as much, since she’s not as into zombies as Arthur is, but she still thought the film fell flat in impact. The emotional beats didn’t hit hard enough, and the script didn’t elevate the story the way it could have.
They both agreed that the movie seemed to prioritize its “bigger meaning” over actual scares or even narrative tension. And while that’s fine in some cases, it didn’t work here.
The core concept, that the real horror is what’s happening emotionally, not the zombies, was so on-the-nose it became distracting. The ending only made this worse, layering on cliché after cliché and veering into religious territory that neither of them thought landed well.
One point they both couldn’t ignore was the pacing. They found themselves checking the time midway through the movie, which is never a good sign. The second half especially dragged, and when it did finally deliver answers, they felt predictable and unsatisfying.
The themes, grief, closure, and redemption, were handed to the audience without subtlety, and that took away from what could’ve been a more powerful narrative.
The Good Bits: Zombies, Visuals, and Daisy Ridley
Despite the disappointment, there were things they liked. First off: the zombies.
When they showed up, they looked great. The design was creepy, the movement unsettling, and there were a couple of intense chase scenes that genuinely worked. A standout moment was a scene in a bus involving a close-quarters fight, well-shot, fast-paced, and full of tension. If the whole film had leaned more into that energy, we might be having a different conversation.
Visually, the film had a lot going for it. Meaghan pointed out several striking shots, like the burnt red sky over a destroyed city or a drone-style sequence showing Ava and her partner Clay driving along a ravaged coastline. The cinematography, especially during Ava’s rogue journey toward the resort where her husband had been staying, was strong. They both appreciated these moments, even if they came too infrequently.
And then there’s Daisy Ridley. They couldn’t say enough good things about her performance. Meaghan said Ridley carried the whole film, emotionally grounding it even when the plot itself felt flimsy. Arthur added that Brenton Thwaites, who played Clay, also gave a strong performance, making their dynamic one of the few consistent strengths in the movie.
So Much Potential, So Little Payoff
What frustrated both hosts the most was the potential the movie had, and how little it did with it. There were small teases of something deeper happening with the zombies.
One scene had a reanimated man burying corpses and seemingly asking to be put down, showing a level of awareness. Another subplot involved a deranged soldier, Riley, who kept several undead chained up while taking notes on their behavior, including his own pregnant wife.
These threads hinted at a bigger story about what was happening to the dead. Were they evolving? Regaining their humanity? We never find out.
Meaghan compared it to Cloverfield, where the audience only gets fragments of information through the eyes of regular people, but it works because the context fits.
Here, the characters are close to the military and supposedly part of the operation, yet the ambiguity feels more like a failure to commit than a creative choice. Arthur agreed, it’s as if the writers dangled interesting ideas but didn’t know how to follow through.
The most glaring example came near the end. Riley forces Ava to impersonate his wife in a deeply disturbing sequence, dancing with her and becoming enraged when she won’t remove her wedding ring. It was supposed to be a commentary on loss and delusion, but it felt more grotesque than meaningful.
When Ava eventually kills Riley and finds his undead wife, now in labor, it leads to the film’s ending: Ava adopts the zombie baby, who for some reason is alive and normal, and we’re supposed to believe this is hopeful. Both Meaghan and Arthur hated it. The science didn’t add up, and the symbolism was too much.
A Relationship Drama Dressed Up as a Zombie Flick
Ultimately, the metaphor became too heavy-handed. The zombie behavior was symbolic of different stages of emotional disconnection, some were passive, some aggressive, some had moments of lucidity, all meant to reflect the emotional fallout of Ava and Mitch’s crumbling relationship. Before Mitch left on his trip, they’d fought about Ava’s infidelity.
After the tragedy, she learns he likely retaliated by cheating himself. There’s no closure, just a tangled mess of guilt and grief. The zombies? Just background noise for that emotional journey.
Arthur was especially let down by this. He loves zombies, and he felt this movie didn’t respect the genre. He wanted survival, tension, and high stakes. Instead, he got a metaphorical dissection of a relationship that didn’t bring anything new to the table. Meaghan was more forgiving but agreed that if you’re going to trade scares for depth, the emotional storytelling has to be worth it.
Here, it wasn’t.
They both agreed the film landed in that awkward “meh” middle, not bad enough to tear apart, not good enough to recommend. And those movies are somehow harder to talk about than the truly awful ones. They linger in your brain for all the wrong reasons.
Final Thoughts
We Bury the Dead had all the ingredients for a unique entry in the zombie genre, stunning visuals, solid performances, and hints of a deeper mythology. But instead of building on that, it leaned too hard on symbolism and left its most interesting concepts unexplored. It wasn’t a total failure, but it missed the mark.
Meaghan and Arthur both gave it around 4 out of 10 digs. If you’re curious or looking for a horror movie that’s more emotional drama than undead terror, maybe give it a shot. But if you came for the zombies? You might leave hungry.