What We Bury the Dead is really about
We Bury the Dead drops its protagonist, Ava, into the wreckage of a catastrophic U.S. military experiment gone catastrophically wrong — the kind of experiment that doesn't just kill people but apparently cancels death's permanence altogether. Tasmania has been cordoned off, reduced to a quarantine zone of ash and grief, and Ava volunteers for a body-retrieval unit not out of civic duty but because her husband is missing somewhere inside that perimeter. What she finds isn't a corpse waiting to be collected. The dead here are aggressive, purposeful, and getting smarter. Director Zak Hilditch frames all of this with a somber, apocalyptic weight that feels less like a genre exercise and more like a war film that happened to wander into horror territory — and that tonal seriousness is both the movie's greatest strength and, occasionally, its biggest liability.
How We Bury the Dead came together — production, cast, and box office
Zak Hilditch, the Australian writer-director probably best known stateside for adapting Stephen King's 1922, assembled a genuinely interesting production coalition for this one: Campfire Studios and Gramercy Park Media anchored the project alongside Australian funding bodies Lotterywest, ScreenWest, and Screen Australia, with The Penguin Empire rounding out the slate. That mix of indie ambition and regional government support explains a lot about the film's texture — it has the scope of something bigger than its budget should allow, shot across Tasmanian locations that do real atmospheric work.
Daisy Ridley leads as Ava, with Brenton Thwaites and Mark Coles Smith in key supporting roles and Matt Whelan also appearing. Vertical handled U.S. distribution, opening the film wide on January 2, 2026 — a graveyard slot, honestly, but one that horror audiences tend to actually show up for. The domestic box office landed at roughly $3.7 million before the film pivoted to digital and streaming in early February, which is modest but not embarrassing for an R-rated horror film with this kind of pedigree. The R rating itself covers strong violent content, gore, language, and brief drug use, so this isn't a film softening its edges for a broader audience.
Critically, the film sits at a Metascore of 61 out of 100 — solidly mixed among professional reviewers — while earning 3 award nominations total. Not a sweep, but recognition that something worthwhile is happening here. Movie OTT has been tracking the film since its theatrical window and catalogues all of this context alongside current streaming availability, which matters when a film moves this quickly from multiplex to home screen.
The performances that anchor We Bury the Dead — and where the script stumbles
Honestly, the case for We Bury the Dead begins and ends with Daisy Ridley. Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus describes the film as "anchored by Daisy Ridley's magnetic performance" and frames it as a meditation on loss and grief that uses zombie tropes as scaffolding rather than spectacle — which is exactly right. Ridley plays Ava with a kind of stoic despair that never tips into numbness; you feel the weight of what she's carrying even in scenes where the script isn't giving her much to work with.
And the script does let her down, particularly in the second half. What's striking is how confidently the film establishes its world — the quarantine zone, the body-retrieval unit, the creeping horror that these aren't passive undead but something more predatory — and then how thoroughly it loses that confidence around the midpoint. The emotional architecture starts to wobble. Subplots that feel essential in the first act become functional at best and tacked-on at worst by the third. Rue Morgue noted the film's strong scope on a modest budget and stressed that it's a character-driven story set against a zombie backdrop rather than a gore-fest — which is fair, though it also means that when the character work falters, there isn't enough visceral momentum to paper over the gaps.
The Tasmanian landscape, though — that never falters. Hilditch and his cinematographer use the island's particular bleakness with real intelligence, and the sound design (singled out by Heaven of Horror as genuinely unnerving) turns every quiet scene into something that sits wrong in your chest. There's a sequence early in the film where Ava first encounters the retrieval unit's staging area, surrounded by body bags and distant military infrastructure, that lands with the kind of dread good horror earns rather than manufactures.
Where to stream We Bury the Dead online
After its brief theatrical run, We Bury the Dead moved quickly onto digital platforms — the film became available on streaming and digital from early February 2026. In the U.S., the film is currently available on Disney+, Hulu, and Fandango at Home, making it genuinely easy to access across a range of subscription tiers. UK audiences got digital and home-video options from early January 2026.
The "Where to Watch" widget at the top of this page pulls live availability data, so if the platform lineup has shifted since this was written, that's your most current source. movieott.com aggregates streaming rights across major services and updates regularly, which is worth bookmarking if you're tracking a title across its release windows. For a film like this — one that moved from wide theatrical to streaming in about five weeks — the streaming version is likely where most people will actually encounter it.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who directed We Bury the Dead?
We Bury the Dead was written and directed by Zak Hilditch, the Australian filmmaker previously known for the Stephen King adaptation 1922. Hilditch also co-developed the project through a coalition of Australian and international production companies.
Q: Where can I watch We Bury the Dead?
In the U.S., We Bury the Dead is currently streaming on Disney+ and Hulu, and is also available for rental or purchase on Fandango at Home. The Where to Watch widget on this page at movieott.com reflects the most up-to-date platform availability.
Q: Is We Bury the Dead worth watching?
If you're willing to accept an uneven second half in exchange for a genuinely compelling lead performance and one of the more atmospheric zombie settings in recent memory, yes. Daisy Ridley carries the film through its rougher patches, and the Tasmanian quarantine-zone setting is unlike anything else in the genre right now.
Q: How scary is We Bury the Dead — is it more horror or thriller?
The film is rated R for strong violence, gore, language, and brief drug use, so it doesn't pull punches on the horror side. That said, it leans more toward psychological dread and somber thriller territory than jump-scare horror — the undead here are aggressive and purposeful, which is unsettling in a different way than most zombie films manage.
Q: What is We Bury the Dead's Rotten Tomatoes score?
As of this writing, We Bury the Dead holds an 88% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a Metascore of 61 out of 100 — a split that reflects strong critical enthusiasm for the film's ambition and performances, tempered by reservations about the script's coherence in the back half.
Final thoughts on We Bury the Dead
We Bury the Dead isn't a perfect film. The script runs out of breath before the finish line, and the emotional payoff doesn't quite match the setup's promise. But Daisy Ridley's performance is the real thing — measured, haunted, and worth the runtime on its own. Zak Hilditch has made something genuinely bleak and visually serious with modest resources, and that counts for a lot in a genre crowded with disposable product. Horror fans who don't mind their zombie films slow and somber will find this one sticks around. You can check current streaming options for We Bury the Dead at Movie OTT before you commit.
