Death isn’t final in “We Bury the Dead,” and that’s the terror driving Zak Hilditch’s new post-apocalyptic thriller. Fronted by Daisy Ridley, the film drops audiences into the aftermath of a U.S. military experiment gone catastrophically wrong, where the corpses covering Tasmania’s scorched landscape don’t always stay in the ground. The film is set to open wide in theaters on January 2, 2026.
Ridley stars as Ava, a woman who joins a body retrieval unit tasked with identifying victims — and secretly hopes to find her missing husband among them. But as she pushes deeper into the island’s southern ruins, Ava learns that some of the dead are stirring, transforming her search into a fight for survival.
Best known for leading “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” and more recently the thriller “Cleaner,” Ridley takes on one of her most harrowing roles yet. She’s joined by Brenton Thwaites (“Titans”), Mark Coles Smith (“Mystery Road: Origin”), and Matt Whelan (“Narcos”), a cast that balances breakout actors with genre-seasoned performers.
For Hilditch, this marks a return to the bleak, humanist thrills that defined “These Final Hours” and his adaptation of Stephen King’s “1922.” His films lean on emotional weight as much as spectacle, finding drama in the desperation of ordinary people caught in extraordinary endings. “We Bury the Dead” continues in that tradition, fusing survivalist horror with themes of grief, resilience, and devotion.
With Ridley anchoring the chaos and Hilditch staging the apocalypse through Tasmania’s brutal terrain, “We Bury the Dead” looks less like another zombie riff and more like a raw, character-driven nightmare about the cost of holding on when the world has already let go.
“We Bury the Dead” will open exclusively in theaters on January 2, 2026. Watch the trailer below.
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