On the prowl: Daisy Ridley in ‘We Bury the Dead’.
WE BURY THE DEAD **** (95 minutes) MA
How gratifying it is to see such invention and fresh ideas wash through such a highly codified, convention-driven genre as the zombie movie.
We’ve just had two major doses of it with the 28 Years Later two-parter and now we have We Bury the Dead, an excellent Australian take that adds new dimension to the well-worn zombie scenario.
Here we are presented with an ingenious variation on the usual post-apocalyptic deal.
Rather than affecting the entire world, this zombie scourge is restricted to Tasmania, and rather than being an apocalypse that threatens to wipe out what’s left of humanity, it’s a contained catastrophe involving a major body retrieval operation while the rest of the world is left in tact.
An experimental weapon of ill-defined character has accidentally detonated off the east coast of Tasmania, sending a lethal pulse across the island that has instantly killed all people in the middle of what was, up till that point anyway, a normal day.
Volunteers have assembled to collect the corpses but are warned that some of the dead aren’t quite, well, dead and to set off their flares so that soldiers can come and shoot the troublesome undead in the brain (now there’s a zombie trope that will never get old).
Among the volunteers is Ava (Daisy Ridley), an American keen to run off and head south into the restricted zone hoping to find her husband, or what’s left of him.
She manages this with Ocker bloke Clay (Brenton Thwaites) and thus begins a road trip through the beautiful but hauntingly quiet landscape stripped of animal life and all artificial light.
As any horror fan is entitled to expect, there are lots of high-quality creep-out moments and bursts of violence as Ava traverses the countryside. The film drips with an atmosphere of dread and foreboding.
Yet where writer/director Zak Hilditch (These Final Hours) really distinguishes this film from the zombie movie pack is in its emotional punch. As Ava’s journey progresses we get glimpses of her life and her relationship, all of which point to a tight cluster of rather moving revelations.
That, coupled with the film’s conceptual originality, is not what we typically get from a zombie adventure.
It’s further proof that Australian filmmakers seem to have a knack for zombies, with the Wrymwood films and 2017’s Cargo being prime examples, along with the post-apocalyptic world, as seen in The Rover and, of course, Mad Max.
And while We Bury the Dead will obviously have special appeal to long-time, hardcore horror fans who have the (very expensive) Dawn of the Dead box set sitting pride of place on their DVD shelf, its high level of craft should entrance even the most zombie-resistant filmgoer.
SAIPAN *** (90 minutes) MA
For sports film lovers comes this solid, fact-inspired drama about the Irish soccer team’s rocky lead up to the 2002 FIFA World Cup involving the prolonged stoush between champion Irish player Roy Keane (Eanna Hardwicke) and try-hard manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan). The performances are strong, with Hardwicke proving especially convincing as a team captain who’s not much of a team player. Coogan is good, as usual. Lots of scenic location shooting.
IS THIS THING ON? *1/2 (121 minutes) M
Unfortunately, Bradley Cooper’s much-ballyhooed movie goes belly-up pretty quickly once you realise it’s in no particular hurry to get to anywhere particularly interesting.
Stinging from a failed marriage, New Yorker Alex Novak (Will Arnett) decides on a whim to take to the stand-up stage and yap about his life, particularly with ex-wife Tess (Laura Dern).
Cooper, who plays support here, has proved himself a very fine director with films such as A Star is Born and Maestro, yet this piece has too little rhythm and way too much flab, with scenes going on and on.
It also sports a few story holes, the most prominent one undercutting the notion that Alex is somehow able to blab on about people without them knowing.
Those with long memories might recall the 1992 Nora Ephron film called This Is My Life, a lovely little film with Julie Kavner that had a slightly similar theme.
Box office footnote: Just a quick follow through about the Australian film Addition that, as predicted last week, had a terrible opening weekend, taking a paltry $128,022 on 140 screens, its per-screen average of $676 signalling that a lot of those sessions barely had any patrons. Sigh.