By George & Josh Bate
This January, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple isn’t the only refined, chilling zombie film worth watching.
In theaters nationwide January 2, writer/director Zak Hilditch’s We Bury the Dead takes place in the aftermath of a catastrophic military experiment. After the U.S. accidentally denotes an experimental weapon on the coast of Australia, over 500,000 people are killed, some of whom begin to reawaken as zombie-like creatures. Ava (played by the Star Wars sequel trilogy’s Daisy Ridley) joins a body retrieval unit to find her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), who was in Australia during the time of the disaster. Ava teams up with local Clay (Brenton Thwaites) and soon learns that reanimated corpses aren’t the only obstacles to finding her husband.
The HoloFiles recently had the chance to interview Zak Hilditch about his new movie, how it remarkably was originally conceived as a zombie film, the influence of Danny Boyle and 28 Days Later, and why Daisy Ridley was the perfect actor to headline the film.
Through the prism of a zombie film, Hilditch fascinatingly explores grief and the elusive nature of closure, something we so desperately seek but are unable to fully reach after losing a loved one. Originally, We Bury the Dead began as an exploration of these themes, devoid of the living dead. “The initial draft was zombie-less,” Hilditch revealed. “It was the same sort of events. It was the same character traversing the same situation, but none of them were coming back. And I never in a million years thought that I had a zombie movie in me. I mean, you can’t do a zombie movie in 2025, like they’re done. But this idea of the theme of unfinished business…with Daisy’s character in this quest for something that you might not ever get, like a proper answer or true catharsis, if I was able to explore that in an overlapping way with the zombies, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve never seen that before.’ And so this idea of unfinished business sort of grew out of that.”
As opposed to the dangerous walking dead that populate George A. Romero’s films and have since featured in countless other movies and shows, We Bury the Dead’s zombies are unexpectedly benign. Daisy Ridley’s Ava and other members of the body retrieval units visit home after home and overwhelmingly uncover dead bodies. On occasion, they encounter reanimated corpses that, unlike most zombies in other stories, merely stand still, stare absent-mindedly, and look creepy. “I didn’t want to do: they’re all just rage zombies from the jump,” Hilditch says. “[Daisy Ridley’s character Ava] overtly alludes to the fact that the longer they go on the more agitated they become, they start to lash out. And this idea that the ones that come back, they all have unfinished business, but if they can’t attain that unfinished business, they start growing agitated. They realize that they’re just rotting flesh and that results in them becoming a bit of a 28 Days Later rage zombie, but it’s not immediate.”
It’s difficult to make a zombie movie in 2025 without drawing comparisons to 28 Days Later. Hilditch explained how Danny Boyle’s seminal zombie flick played a key role in influencing the course of his movie. “Obviously the DNA from 28 Days Later rumps rampant through this,” Hilditch said. “Not only did that change the zombie film, I thought it changed cinema. I saw it just out of film school and I was a massive Danny Boyle fan, but he’s done this kitchen sink drama smashed together with a zombie apocalypse. It was mind-blowing that you could do that. And he’s even shooting the film on the same camera, the same XL1 that I’m at film school using. And I’m like, ‘Why is he using such a shitty camera?’ In Danny Boyle, there was just so much mystique around that film. And yeah, it’s one of my all-time favorite films. So much so that I, again, never in a million years did I think I had a zombie movie made. Lo and behold, I did, but the roots from that film run strong through all of my work, really. It’s the epitome of an ordinary person caught in an extraordinary situation, which I just love so much.”
The ordinary person caught in an extraordinary situation in We Bury the Dead is played by Daisy Ridley, who delivers one of her best performances to date. Playing a character who internalizes her pain, Ridley wears mental agony on her face so authentically and beautifully in the film. She conveys an extraordinary depth of emotion through her eyes and subtle alterations to her facial expression, allowing the audience to understand her suffering without needing to be told explicitly through dialogue about her suffering.
“Daisy’s just got such a way of drawing you in,” Hilditch stated regarding the casting of Ridley. “Some actors and actresses have it, but then some really have it. And she’s got an aura about her and a face about her. When you put a camera on her, you’re just drawn in, even those scenes where she’s not really saying anything, just listening. I was just a fan just watching the split as she’s performing something that I wrote. I’m like, ‘Holy fucking shit, look what we’re getting here. She’s just knocking it out of the park.’
Although steadily building a strong and diverse filmography after her star-making turns in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Daisy Ridley had yet to deliver a performance quite like the one she produces in We Bury the Dead. “I just can’t wait for people to see her in a different light,” Hilditch enthusiastically stated. “A muscle that no one’s really seen her flex before. She’s just doing so much in this movie that I think it’s gonna really blow people away.”
With We Bury the Dead hitting theaters on January 2 and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple arriving just two weeks later on January 16, 2026 is already shaping up to be a great year for zombie flick fanatics. Those seeking a film that transcends the horror sub-genre pioneered by George A. Romero to become a more intimate character study and examination of complex and universally relatable themes of grief and closure should look no further than Zak Hilditch’s new feature.
Check out the video of our full interview with Zak Hilditch below….
Check out a trailer for We Bury the Dead below….
