Star Wars hero Daisy Ridley fighting a zombie apocalypse in Albany. That’s reason enough to see WA director Zak Hilditch’s latest movie, We Bury The Dead.
The 33-year-old Ridley has billions in box office revenue on her resume after being plucked from relative obscurity in her early 20s to play Rey in JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens and two subsequent sequels.
That galaxy far, far away catapults young actors into pop culture ubiquity, whether they’re prepared for it or not.
For Harrison “Han Solo” Ford, it was a springboard that resulted in an enviable career, but, for others, such as Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker in the prequel trilogy), the intensity of the spotlight is unsustainable.
Where Ridley lands on this spectrum was shaped by a global pandemic.
“I think it took a long time (to process the fame that came with Star Wars),” she admits over a Zoom call with STM.
“I think that lockdown and COVID, spiritually and emotionally for me, became a very necessary moment of rest.
“Because (Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker) had just come out, there was a lot to process, so actually having to sort of sit in that ended up being quite good for me.”
But she didn’t leave the Star Wars universe empty-handed.
“I’m always worried I’m going to be robbed, because I’ve still got a lightsaber or two,” she laughs.
Though reprising Rey remains on the cards (more on that later), the actor is relishing the opportunity to take on roles that push her in new directions, including all the way to WA’s Great Southern.
Shot in early 2024, We Bury The Dead has Albany filling in for Hobart, where a fictitious US military disaster has just killed tens of thousands of Tasmanians.
One of the victims is the husband of Ridley’s Ava Newman, an American woman who ventures to the Apple Isle as a volunteer in the Australian government’s Body Retrieval Unit.
When the dead start to become decidedly undead, Ava’s goal of getting closure with hubby takes on a whole new meaning and she ends up on a zombie-dodging mission with proper Aussie larrikin, Clay, played by Pirates Of The Caribbean star Brenton Thwaites.
“It was quite funny, because, when I got to Albany, I thought, ‘God, there are more zombies than I thought there were when I first read the script’,” Ridley laughs.
“I just thought it was the most beautiful story about this woman trying to find an answer, and . . . there are lots of answers she’s trying to seek, not just about her husband, but also about her own behaviour and what it means to let go of the idea of what you thought your life was.”
Ridley wasn’t the only one surprised about the amount of zombies in the final version of the project — Hilditch’s first drafts of We Bury The Dead didn’t contain any at all.
The origin of the film can be traced back to 2017, when the director found himself clearing out his mother’s house following her death after a long battle with breast cancer.
“This really all started as an exploration of grief, and how you navigate that when it hits you, and never in a million years did I think it was going to end up being a Daisy Ridley zombie movie,” Hilditch says.
Early drafts didn’t have the victims of the disaster coming back to life, but Hilditch says as soon as he came up with that idea and tied it to the concept of unfinished business, a parallel to Ava’s character arc, the project was “off to the races”.
“It would have been a very different, much more sombre affair, without (zombies),” the director acknowledges.
“There was a similar movie in there, but it was just lacking true thrills, true threats.”
The director knew he had found a fresh take on a well-worn genre but was also committed to honouring established zombie tropes; tropes that he himself loved as a kid, renting horror flicks from the local video shop in Girrawheen.
“If you’re going to try your hand at doing a zombie movie, given how obsessive people are about that genre, you damn well better have something new to say,” he laughs.
Ridley is one of those obsessives, revealing she’s seen “all of the zombie films out there” and, like Hilditch, cites the 28 Days Later franchise as a particular favourite.
Her love of the genre was pivotal in securing her involvement, and Hilditch has no qualms admitting the project might still be in development otherwise.
“I mean, it was just an absolute dream; she was the very first actor that was sent the script,” the director says.
“And you prepare yourself for all the knockbacks and all the waiting and that awful game that we play, but, within less than a week, I was zooming Daisy, and, on the Zoom, she was saying that she was all in.
“It’s just like lightning striking, with the right actress at the right time, being given something she hasn’t really done before, but just absolutely wanting to sink her teeth into it, and just get to Perth and just get rocking and rolling on it.”
And sink her teeth into the project, Ridley sure did.
STM was invited to Albany to watch her shoot a scene on We Bury The Dead, which involved the actor fighting off a zombie in an overturned bus.
The complicated action sequence had to be filmed in one take, and Ridley delivered peak intensity over and over again as she and Hilditch played with small aspects of the performance.
As challenging as that was, it wasn’t the toughest day on set.
“It’s so strange because it’s different strokes for different folks,” Ridley explains.
“I suppose that bus scene physically was tricky, and knowing that they were going to do it in one take made you think, ‘Oh, f…, I can’t miss this, all these things have to be done’, but the toughest scene that springs to mind was not for its difficulty, actually the opposite.”
The scene in question is one of quiet intensity, when Ava finds herself in the company of a soldier played by Mark Coles Smith and experiences the age-old apocalyptic realisation that humans are more terrifying than any zombie.
“Figuring out the tone of that scene was something I worried about,” Ridley says.
She needn’t have worried — it’s one of the best sequences in the film.
Even before the opening weekend box office in Australia is counted, We Bury The Dead is a success.
“It’s delivered an estimated $9.3 million to the WA economy during production and employed approximately 300 West Aussies,” Screenwest CEO Rikki Lea Bestall agrees.
“It’s been so great to hear Daisy rave about working in WA on US talk shows and on radio over the last few weeks – WA is well and truly establishing itself as a sought-after filming destination.”
It’s not just the work Ridley raves about.
“I think I did try almost every restaurant in Albany,” she laughs. “Liberte was delicious.”
Now with her very own zombie movie under her belt, Ridley is excited to move into the next phase of her career, with a role opposite Johnny Depp and Ian McKellen in Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol hitting cinemas later this year.
And then there’s her return to the Star Wars universe in New Jedi Order, a project shrouded in secrecy.
“If I didn’t think it was a good idea, I wouldn’t have done it,” Ridley says.
“I think the idea is great. I think the story will be fantastic. It’s 12 years after we did The Force Awakens, so it will be a very different feeling for me, I imagine, but I’m really looking forward to that.”
We Bury The Dead is in cinemas now