We Bury the Dead: Daisy Ridley Digs Deep (and Possibly Too Deep) (horror film trailer).
If you thought Daisy Ridley had finished fighting the undead after The Rise of Skywalker, think again. In Zak Hilditch’s upcoming zombie survival horror We Bury the Dead (out 9 October 2025 in Australia and January 2026 in the US), she swaps lightsabers for shovels — and emotional trauma for, well, even more emotional trauma.
This time, Ridley plays Ava Newman, a woman who volunteers with a military “body retrieval unit” after a catastrophic experiment leaves the world knee-deep in corpses. Unfortunately, the corpses don’t stay buried — and as Ava searches for her missing husband, her journey through grief and rot turns out to be less therapy session, more thermonuclear panic attack.
Early critics have been cautiously impressed. IndieWire called the film “top-notch” with “urgent pacing” and “gorgeous cinematography,” while Variety admired its attempts to exhume something new from the zombie graveyard — though they noted it occasionally “swerves back toward traditional horror territory at breakneck speed.” In other words, it’s a bit like a Romero film that briefly remembers it wants to win awards.
We Bury the Dead first premiered at South by Southwest earlier this year, earning a respectable 89% on Rotten Tomatoes — which, in zombie terms, is practically sainthood. Alongside Ridley, the cast includes Mark Coles Smith, Brenton Thwaites, and Kym Jackson as Lt. Wilkie, whose main job seems to be ensuring the military continues to make catastrophically bad decisions.
Filmed in the haunting landscapes of Western Australia, the movie wraps its survival thrills in a surprisingly moving meditation on loss and love — a sort of The Walking Dead meets The Leftovers, with fewer sermons and more rotting fingers. Some critics say it’s too familiar; others claim it’s too emotional for a zombie flick. Here at SFcrowsnest, we call that Tuesday.
Whether you come for the scares, the sorrow, or to see Daisy Ridley prove she can still anchor a genre film without any Jedi mind tricks, We Bury the Dead looks to be one of the livelier corpse-fests of 2025. Just don’t get too attached to anyone. Or anything. Especially not your pulse.
