We Bury the Dead

Directed by Zak Hilditch, We Bury the Dead follows Daisy Ridley’s Ava as she attempts to track down her husband in the aftermath of a horrific military disaster. Filmmaker Hilditch, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a progressively lackluster endeavor that slowly-but-surely squanders its promising setup, which is a shame, ultimately, given that the picture boasts (and benefits from) its novel spin on a familiar genre and Ridley’s first-class performance – with Hilditch’s exceedingly, excessively deliberate sensibilities transforming the picture into a woefully interminable experience. It doesn’t help, certainly, that We Bury the Dead‘s been saddled with a seriously hit-and-miss episodic midsection that’s often more miss than hit (eg there’s a long, tiresome stretch involving Ava’s encounter with an unstable soldier), while the abrupt and deeply unsatisfying conclusion ensures that the whole thing ends on about as underwhelming a note as one could envision – with the final result a misfire that generally feels like it could (and should) be so much better.

** out of ****