We Bury the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ can be considered a zombie movie, but its focus isn’t on the unᴅᴇᴀᴅ at all. Australian writer-director Zak Hilditch, who is known for his past films 1922 and These Final Hours, centers his latest horror thriller on members of a “body retrieval unit” who wander the wasteland of Tasmania, decimated after a military experiment.

The story is largely told through the eyes of Ava, played by Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley. Starring alongside Ridley, however, are Mark Coles Smith (Mystery Road: Origin) as Riley and Brenton Thwaites (тιтans) as Clay. The protagonists spend We Bury the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ navigating post-experiment Tasmania, with Ridley’s Ava hoping to find signs that her husband somehow survived.

ScreenRant’s Liam Crowley spoke with Daisy Ridley, Mark Coles Smith, and Zak Hilditch at SXSW 2025 about their vibrant yet emotional movie We Bury the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. The cast and creator discussed the film’s unique take on the zombie genre and how Ridley and Smith’s characters fit into the world. Plus, Ridley spoke about her continued place in the Star Wars universe.

We Bury The ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Began As A Very Different Movie

An Early Draft Of Hilditch’s Film “Didn’t Even Have Zombies”

We Bury the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ offers a very different take on the idea of zombies, probably because “There was an original script of this that didn’t even have zombies,” according to Zak Hilditch. Once they were in, the question was, “‘How can you make a zombie movie that can cut through all the other zombie movies?’” Hilditch’s idea was to make them as organic to the story as possible: “It was only when they started infiltrating the world of the film from a script level that everything started to sing a little better.”

Ultimately, “The situation that Ava finds herself in,” said Hilditch, “is then only complemented by the struggle of these zombies as well. It came from a thematic point of view, and that was the only way I wanted to do it … Once I cracked that code, it elevated everything.”

Daisy Ridley’s American Accent Helped Her Find Her Character

The Actor Shares One Way She Found To Easily Become Ava

Daisy Ridley’s character in We Bury the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ is an American, and the actor revealed that her accent work offered her “a different approach to character.” Ridley explained, “I always find accent work to be very revealing.” As to what it revealed: “Ava is really the out-of-towner. She is in a situation she shares with a lot of people in the film, but she’s flown in to try and figure it out. By virtue of being an outsider and her country being responsible for this cataclysmic event, she is also shunned in some ways.”

Mark Coles Smith’s Riley Has Some Key Things In Common With Ava

Like Ridley’s Character, He Has “His Own Personal Agenda”

“Riley makes up the military component of Tasmania’s post-apocalyptic situation,” Mark Coles Smith said about his character. “But they’ve got civilians down there, which was always odd to me–that civilians have been brought into this space that’s heavily decimated.” Even though Riley is part of the military, “He’s actually kind of operating with his own personal agenda and intentions, and they mirror Ava’s character, in a way.”

That sameness is key to the relationship between the two characters, revealed Smith: “He hears what she’s doing, and it’s sort of symbolic of what he’s also processing and going through. There’s a gravity between them, and it just kind of gets more and more complex.” So complex that the characters aren’t even necessarily too afraid of the movie’s monsters: “Normally what we see in a zombie film is [that] zombies turn up and then everyone’s afraid and trying to survive. That’s not the priority of fear for some of these characters in this world.”

Practical Effects & Detailed Sets Helped Ground The Film & Its Performances

“Strangely Enough, It’s Very Intimate”, Ridley Said Of Filming Body Retrieval Scenes

The filmmakers behind We Bury the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ aimed to make something emotionally resonant and easily relatable, and did so by enlisting an A-list prosthetic artist and shooting in real people’s homes. “We were able to get a window with Jason Baird, an amazing prosthetics and SFX guy. He was Academy Award nominated for Elvis, and we got in H๏τ on the heels of that.” Baird helped design zombies that were caused by radiation, which offered a chance to create a new look for the creatures. “We really couldn’t have done it without him,” said Hilditch.

On set, Daisy Ridley found herself breaking into lived-in spaces. “When you know [you’re] filming in someone else’s house, it’s incredibly intimate,” the actor shared. This was especially true for Ridley given Ava’s job: “She’s part of the body retrieval unit. She’s trying to find people who have been either killed or somewhere in between by this event. Of course the story is very intimate, but actually doing that is very intimate.”

“There are props,” Ridley said, “and then you see people’s real images. You see their real family pH๏τos … and because we had filmed in so many different houses, that added a sort of tangible reality to the film.” That reality, according to Ridley, is emotional by nature: “Every person looking for bodies is hoping that they’re going to find someone they love, and they’re either going to find them alive or they’re going to find them as a zombie.”

Riley Is A Villain, But It’s Deeper Than That

“There’s A Really Complicated Moral Psychological Space That He’s In”

Smith very much wanted the audience to feel empathy for his character Riley. “If I was doing my job right, that’s what I hoped would happen–[that] the audience would be a little confused.” It was important to Smith that “it wasn’t just, ‘Here’s this guy, the antagonist, he’s the bad guy.” Instead, “There’s a really complicated moral psychological space that he’s in.”

Ridley weighed in, saying, “For Ava, I found the most scary thing about the sequence we did together is [that] Riley’s grief is very palpable, and the desperation of him finding the answers is also understandable.” In Ridley’s eyes, that makes for a more interesting movie: “Nothing is more terrifying than not [just] thinking someone is the full antagonist, [instead] thinking, ‘I actually understand what it is you’re doing and why you’re doing it,’ but the situation is still terrifying. It’s a very confusing moment.”

Daisy Ridley Speaks On Her Next Star Wars Movie

Ridley Will Return As Rey In Star Wars: New Jedi Order

When Daisy Ridley returns to Star Wars, as far as anyone knows, she will be the franchise’s senior cast member. When asked what it will be like to return in a leadership role like that, Ridley said, “I don’t know that I ever really see myself as a leader, because the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.” For her, it’s about the work: “I think about creatively staying open and being collaborated with, and I always find it exciting to work with new people.”

But, “I started off the youngest, and now I won’t be that,” Ridley acknowledged, continuing, “Because I’ve worked with people who have not been on film sets at all and [I know] how overwhelming it can feel each time, I think we all just hope that the people coming in, whether it’s for the first time or the fifth time … feel as comfortable as possible.”

As to whether the new Star Wars movie will aim for the operatic scale of its predecessors or tell a more intimate tale, Ridley simply said, “We’ll see.”

Source: Screen Rant Plus