Daisy Ridley Talks Grief & Zombies in New Horror We Bury The Dead [Exclusive]

Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead undeniably established George Romero as the godfather of the zombie genre. Ever since, projects such as World War Z, Resident Evil, The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, and 28 Days Later, to name a few, have further fuelled Hollywood’s fascination with re-animated corpses. We Bury the Dead – which shuffled into theatres January 2nd – aims to continue feeding that appetite with a twist on zombies.

We Bury the Dead takes place after the detonation of a device in Tasmania, which instantly obliterates the population. Daisy Ridley portrays Ava, a desperate woman seeking closure. Hoping that her missing husband Mitch survived the blast, Ava joins a body retrieval unit in order to enter the quarantined zone. Ava, however, soon discovers the undead… which the military insisted were harmless and slow-moving… are becoming more dangerous and violent than she could ever have imagined. Their teeth chattering, grotesque appearances and reasons for coming back to life certainly prove unnerving, but Ridley notes other facets of these ghouls captivated her attention. 

“I suppose what got to me is director Zak Hilditch got really wonderful actors to play the zombies and they all had their version of embodying what that is,” Ridley tells ComicBook. “I suppose under my skin might not be the right phrase, but the one that stuck with me was when Ava is almost where she needs to be and she comes across this dad and the family. We filmed that on the last evening and I was so moved by his performance. Obviously, we meet many different zombies in many different states, but this person, who knows even in that state that he can’t live without his family, that to me was so resonate and so wonderful.”

Ava and Mitch were hardly the perfect couple. In fact, they had reached a crossroad in their marriage. But Ava’s grief over the possible loss of her husband and the life they once shared threatens to swallow her up. 

“What she ends up expressing is she is someone who has made terrible decisions in her marriage,” says Ridley. “What she discovers is her response to the grief of the fertility journey she is on with her husband. The way she responds to that is really unforgiveable. I felt in playing her that she is propelled by just needing to explain, needing to have that closure and needing to be able to say goodbye, and then having to reckon with what it means when the answer you are searching for is not the one that you want.  

“In a way, too, it feels a little selfish,” she adds. “Then, Ava has the conversation with the military person who says, ‘We are experiencing the same thing.’ Her grief, in this moment to her, is the biggest in the world, but it’s not bigger than other people’s grief. And how is it that we say goodbye? How is it that we go on that journey? We all do it so differently. “ 

Ridley may be charming the indie crowd with We Bury the Dead and the recent The Last Resort, but Star Wars: New Jedi Order will mark the actress’ return to full-blockbuster, intergalactic mode. Star Wars: The Force Awakens introduced Ridley’s character Rey, a desert scavenger thrust into a war between the Resistance and the New Order, while also forcing her to embrace an unexpected destiny. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the third installment, premiered six years ago, and Ridley describes stepping back into that world and Rey’s shoes for the upcoming film as “interesting.”

“I am six years older,” Ridley concludes. “I am in a different moment. I think the story will be wonderful. I think the wait will be worthwhile. I think it will be a discovery, as all roles are, of where Rey is when we meet her again.”

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