ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese spoke with We Bury the Dead star Brenton Thwaites about his new zombie movie with Daisy Ridley. Thwaites discussed bringing some fun to a very contemplative movie, its unique tone, and more. We Bury the Dead is now playing in theaters.
“After a catastrophic American military experiment, resulting in mass casualties across Tasmania. Ava (Ridley) joins a body retrieval unit to help identify the dead and search for her husband in the southern part of the island,” reads the official synopsis. “As Ava makes her way south, across the ravaged landscape, she soon learns that some of the victims of the disaster are coming back to life.”
Tyler Treese: This is a much more contemplative zombie movie than we’re used to seeing. What about this script really appealed to you and made you want to get on board?
Brenton Thwaites: I liked that the storytelling was quite melancholic and irreverent. You know, it seemed like at every turn it was doing exactly what I thought it wouldn’t do or I wasn’t expecting it to do. You know, I like that we weren’t really handed the things that we wanted to see. My character’s not slashing throats or shooting a bunch of zombies. He is kind of, you know, this character that’s just trying to figure it out and has a lot of questions and has his own kind of emotional inner life, questions that he’s trying to answer.
But at the same time, you know, the twist at the end with Ava’s character [and having] been drawn away from her from the middle of the film and then put back together just seems like we’re… you know, it, I mean, there’s the outside aspect as well. It was a zombie movie outside during the day, you know, in a beautiful place in Australia. So that alone was quite different.
But these two characters that are weirdly put together by circumstance, trying to figure out their own, you know, and be vulnerable towards each other and support each other. The way they do that was quite unique. I’d never seen that before and just thought that Zak had done a really good job of crafting those two characters.
We definitely learned more about Clay once he’s reintroduced to the film later on. At first, he’s just very vibes-based. He does cocaine. He is like, “You fancy a bump?” He wants to drive cool motorcycles. How is it kind of bringing some fun into this movie that’s filled with dead people and grief? Clay’s kind of like this light early on, where you do see that life does continue in a way, and there’s some normalcy despite what’s happened.
Brenton Thwaites: Well, I mean, if the world is ending, why not, right? Why not have some fun? But I think it’s just a character that people just, I don’t know, hopefully just get some fun watching and that relief to the constant tension and the low drum of zombies and the threat of zombies and, you know, especially the darkness of the world we’re in where there’s dead people everywhere.
So it’s a character that is smoking cigarettes and doing the bump and riding a motorcycle, but at the same time, that’s all, you know, maybe a veneer for his inner problems and emotional journey. I kind of liked that the most heroic thing he does is really just get on a motorbike and try to take her to the destination. He’s not overtly action-based or anything, but you know, he is just trying to help out, doing all he knows how to do. That’s all he can do. Do coke and ride a motorcycle.
Thanks to Brenton Thwaites for taking the time to talk about We Bury the Dead.
