Zombie Issues // We Bury the Dead

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hey, I'm Dahlia. And I'm Alma. Welcome to the Gory Details podcast, where we discuss horror from every angle. We break it down with humor, sarcasm, and curiosity, looking at what scares and excites us most, what gets ignored, and the people shaping the genre right now. Ah, Alma, I've had a week. It's been a week. What about you? I mean, I know that you said you've had a you've had an adventurous week this this past couple of weeks, though. Yeah, so I went on vacation.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I've just been doing a lot of shopping. I got one kid going back to school, so we're taking care of that. Um, yeah, just normal, normal, everyday shit happening. I went to go see Spider-Man twice already. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I guess does that mean that I I would assume that means you like it? Nah, it's average. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Just because, you know, two, well, two of my daughters are like huge fans. I guess I'm a fan, but it's usually the only Marvel movies that I really like is the Spider-Man movies. I like Spider-Man. He's fun, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Oh, I love that. I'm not, I'm not into, I'm not into those type of movies. It's not for any reason. Like I'm I'm not a hater. I'm not a I'm not anything like that. I just I don't get into those type of movies. But I love watching people get excited about them. And like you watching it twice already, I think that is so fun. I wish I could get into that genre of movie like that. And because like I said, it just people get so excited about it. They go out, they take their whole family, it's an event. Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Everybody and their kids up and there, up in there. So you've gone twice already, and you went, you took your you took your girls. Yes. And so I'll probably go see it just one more time at the theater. Just one more time. Three's my favorite. One more times at the theater. Like if I really like something, I want to watch it three times.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

And then you'll you'll finish out uh finish watching it at home a few more times, right? Yep. Like have a marathon of it, watch all the movies.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

But other than that, I've um on the horror side, a thriller side, I finished watching Widow's Bay. Oh, and how was that? Did you have you seen it? No, not yet. Well, let me give you all a lot of spoilers. Okay. Number one. Okay, spoiler alert. Just kidding. Just kidding. It's a really great show. It's a really great show. It's like um, it has that comedy side to it, and it's it's just really good. It builds up and uh it's gonna have another second season. I'm happy about that because it didn't finish. And I was like, please, please, you know, I don't want to finish watching this show and then not have a second season. So I'm glad it was picked up again. And so we'll be able to see at least uh another season of it, and if not conclude it.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

But I've been trying so hard not to say anything about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I could tell yeah, you want to tell me so hard.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Yes, and so if you ask me later, I'll tell you all the bits. Okay, off the mic, you'll you'll tell me. All right. Well, this month, this month, we're actually gonna be discussing zombies, and we've already started discussing zombies here on the podcast. Um last week we discussed the return of the living dead. Is that right? Yes, yes, that's a ghost sound, not a zombie sound. It's a ghost sound that yeah, it's they're paranormal. We could say they're paranormal. I don't know, not really. Whatever. Anyways, zombies are paranormal. I'm sticking by it. Anyways, so now we are going to be discussing We Bury the Dead. The We Bury the Dead. This is a newer movie. So just a heads up, there are going to be spoilers. So if you haven't watched this movie, this is spoiler alert for you right now because I don't think, yes, this is a newer podcast for us. But in the past, when we did uh our last podcast, we didn't do a lot of new movies. Uh we did a lot of the older movies, and so it wasn't a big deal that we discussed spoilers, but um yeah, it's gonna be mega spoilers on this one. So just a heads up there.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Um not, you know, you can go watch it on Hulu. It's streaming right now, and then come back and finish listening.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Or you could just listen to us talk about it and then go watch it anyways. Because I don't know. I watch movies all the time, knowing what's gonna happen at the end. It doesn't bother me then. Yeah. I'm kind of the same way too. Uh taste their own though. So we bury the dead, 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. 87%. 87. Okay. I don't know what that look on your face was for. Is that like do you agree or not? Well, yeah, kind of. Yeah, kind of.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah. I was just like surprised, you know, because it's a zombie movie, has zombies in it, and so usually people are like, uh, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah, it's it's well, we'll get into it about it being a zombie movie. Um IMDB says it's after a military uh I cannot talk. After a military catastrophe leaves Tasmania filled with a partially reanimated corpses. With partially reanimated corpses, a volunteer searching for her missing husband abandons recovery operations and travels south through isolated communities collapsing beneath guilt. I don't like that description very much, but it it kind of sums it up pretty much what's going on here. This uh lady is uh looking for her missing husband after this military incident happened in Tasmania and um a whole bunch of dead people.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah, it wipes out the whole the whole country, the whole the whole yeah, and everybody is killed, including all the animals and stuff, and that's why I was like, whoa, even like the fish? I don't know. Was it like the fish? It's it said that the the whole living population. I just have imagined the the people and the whatever kind of animals grow there.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

I never even thought about that. The animals. I did it I didn't even dawn on me. Of course, it's gonna dwight out the animals. Yeah, so it's gonna be like uh dead land there for a while. They're gonna have to, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Bring in some animals like uh Noah's Ark and shit, you know? Yeah. I don't know what animals grow there.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I'm like, what how are they gonna bring them back? It's Australia, so it's gonna be a lot of the scary ones. So they have the scary ones, a lot of the deadly ones. Uh you know how they say a lot of the They have a lot of cute ones, though.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

They have a lot of cute ones, a lot of cute ones that ends up being mean and and crocodiles, so we don't need, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Is it crocodiles live? See, I don't even know where animals are, so don't even ask me. I'm I'm being stupid. Crocodile Dundee.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Crocodile Dundee. That's all I remember. So yeah, there's gonna be crocodiles down there. I don't, yeah, I don't know my animal kingdoms very well, other than there are crocodiles down there. Um, but yeah, so that's uh that's that's the movie. We're done. We'll see y'all next time. Goodbye. No, but seriously, this this actually is a movie with zombies in it. Um, whether it's a zombie movie or whether it's a movie with zombies in it, we'll get into it and we'll discuss it here a little bit. Um, Alma, I already told you 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, what it's about, who wrote it, who directed it, who's in it. Give me all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yes, this movie was written and directed by Zach Hilditch, and it stars Daisy Ridley as Ava, Brenton Thwaites as Clay, Matt Wheelan as Mitch, and then Mark Cole Smith as on IMDB, he's listed as Riley, but I don't remember them saying this character's name. He was a soldier, and so we can just refer to him as soldier because that's all I knew what his name was. I don't remember anybody ever bringing it up.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Yeah, now that I think about it, his name might have been like on his like uniform or something. Maybe that's why.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Fuck yeah, that's where the name would have been. Yeah, too tiny a print.

unknown 9:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

So, anyways, so the movie starts off with uh the US, of course, did something horrible as always, and fucked up and created this it was an experimental bomb or experimental uh weapon. Weapon weapon, yeah. The weapon that uh wiped out the entire island of Tasmania of uh in Australia and just which this is gonna this is the part that is really, really troubling me throughout the whole fucking movie. So this is the United States military that did this, right? Kills all these people, these Australians, right? Well, okay, obviously more than just Australians, but all these people, right? And uh they have to go and they have to, you know, take care of uh retrieving the dead bodies and you know, going through from house to house, uh business to business, building to building or whatever, and retrieving the you know, loved ones and everything. And here she is, this woman, this American woman, Ava, that they allow to come in and do this with them so she can look for her husband, who is, I believe, also American. Ooh, I don't even remember. I can't remember. I don't know, and I don't think it matters that he's great that much.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, I don't know if it matters that he's American or not. To me, it matters if she's American, because she's American. It was the US military that did this to the Australians, and she's allowed to come in and be a part of this search and rescue. No, it's not a rescue, it's search and retrieve um team to come in and help be a part of this, you know, whatever you want to call it. I don't understand how they were so welcoming towards her. There was like I know this is a movie. No, I don't know. But here's the thing I know it's just a movie, but I just think it's it's the movie could have been a little bit more um, I don't know, realistic in the fact that I think there there would have been a little bit more animosity towards her. You know, she's representing the United States here, and she the the fucking US gone done and killed all these people there.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah, there was only that one little scene they touched upon upon the fact that she wasn't American, um, where that soldier called her a Yankee and uh I didn't even want any Yankees coming in here or whatever, and um because that's when she was trying to sneak off the first time so she can go find her husband. She's also on a on a on a mission. She doesn't care about anything, she uh uh anything else. Her own sole mission is to find her husband. She only signed up, and everybody I'm sure who signed up wants to look for somebody, but that's what she's there to do. That's why she wants to sneak away, that's why she has this plan to go find her husband out um at this retreat spa hotel place that he went off to.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Right. So we'll talk about what kind of zombies these are Z are excuse me. What kind of zombies these are. Um what's up with Ava, and uh we're gonna touch upon motherhood also as part of this story because uh motherhood comes into play a big time into this movie. Um we uh see it in the movie, literally. Um there's uh scene where we have a pregnant zombie that ends up giving birth, and there's also um the writer-director of the movie during the making of the movie actually wrote this about his mother who had passed away. Uh so that that goes into the the dynamics and the uh storytelling of this movie as well. So that would be interesting to get into. So opening thoughts real quick. Uh We Bury the Dead is a zombie movie, but the zombies kind of feel like they're, I don't know, for me, the the second second least interesting or second most interesting part of this movie. I don't know how to word that exactly, but uh the draw. It's yeah, it's the more the story is the the woman, Ava, trying to find her husband and what's going on there. And from the beginning, we start seeing that there is something going on there. You know, when you find out what ends up happening, it's like, oh yeah, I knew there was something going on there. This was not just straight up, I'm looking for my husband because he's missing. There was more going on there. And uh we end up finding that out. But yeah, so this is more of a drama, maybe. A little bit thriller with some zombies in it versus this is a zombie movie. There you go. There you go. Would you agree? Yeah. Okay. Ava travels to Test Media looking for her husband uh after this military disaster, and she becomes a part of this recovery burial effort. That's the word I was looking for, burial effort. And uh she's searching for her husband after apparently was um some kind of fight, some kind of argument that they've had, and she's hoping that she finds him alive, but not just alive. She's hoping that she finds him. Well, he's gonna be dead.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yes, she's looking for him to be one of the reanimated. This is this is what I like about this movie. It starts off right into the thick of it, okay? They're showing in the background the military accident, and um they're showing uh what happened to everybody, and they're already aware that some of the dead have be are becoming reanimated. They say partially reanimated, and I think it's because they're when they come to they're doing certain things. Um but one of the things they do though is pretty cool because they're gnashing their teeth together, grinding them together, and it sounds pretty gnarly, but they're um coming back, and so she wants her husband to be one of those that is coming back, that's reanimated. And it starts off with this knowledge, and then the the people who are uh retrieving the bodies who are pulling out the bodies, they tell them right away, yes, the rumors are true. Uh some of the bodies are becoming reanimated, and then this is what you're supposed to do. So there's a procedure, and they immediately take them down with uh a couple of headshots.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

So right away, she knows that if they were to find, for example, in this case, her husband reanimated, they are to flag down the soldiers to come and take him out. Of course, she doesn't want that. She wants to be the first one to find him so that she can whatever it is that she feels that she needs to do to, I don't know, close the loop here as far as however they left things, you know, before he went away on this retreat, you know, that's what she's trying to do here. She's trying to avoid the soldiers taking care of him first. This is where I find it so aggravating, though. All these movies. She's going off to be on her own, of course. She's doing going off to be uh do her own thing. And I get it. That's the point of these movies. You know, she wants to go off. And uh uh she enlists the help of one of her um search mates here, one of the I forget his name already. Probably you remember it. Clay, okay. Um, he is someone who just kind of is adventurous at heart to begin with, so he seizes the opportunity to jump on a motorcycle and drive her about, you know, out in the in the sticks here, and they go off and do their thing. But they're going before they do all that, they're going from house to house, and she knows obviously that she's not seeing gonna see him because she knows where her husband is. He's she's on he's on a resort at this certain place, and she's like a hundred miles, a couple hundred miles from him. Um so we're getting to know these zombies that we're finding. I want to get into talking about what these zombies are like because they are just kind of like a they're not the main part of the story, but they are a part of the story. And I do want to talk about them, but they're not your zombies that you're probably used to because I think they were trying to make a new uh they're trying to make a new zombie here. They were kind of self-aware, I think, in this world. They had one where this zombie had come to be awake or whatever you want to call it, and his family was dead because not every zom not everybody comes back as a zombie once they're dead. So in this family, there was a family of, I guess it was like a family of four, I'm just gonna say. And only the father came back alive. And um he came back but he came back alive, and he wanted to bury his the rest of his loved ones. So Ava helped bury his loved ones, and then he just sat down at the hole, and by he wasn't talking or anything, but you could just tell all this through the motions he was doing and everything, that he wanted them to be buried, and then when he sat down, he wanted to be with them at the end, so she took care of him so that he could be with them. So all these things is that you could just from going through watching these little bits and pieces, is that they are self-aware, they know that they're alive when they should be dead, that they're that's that's what I'm that's the that's the feeling I'm getting, at least. And it's it's kind of very depressing. It's we're not seeing them trying to eat them, we're not seeing them. I mean, we see one that kind of goes after another person trying to like run after them and kind of almost like an attacking motion, but we didn't see like if they were gonna try to eat them or anything.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

It was probably more like just out of uh um Yeah, they get really uh and um a couple of them they come chasing after them. Um But we don't know what they're gonna do once they catch him. But we don't wanna know. We'd also don't want to know what they're gonna do when they catch him. We just know that they're chasing them and um they're being very aggressive. Uh at one point the soldier that we meet says that he thinks that they're coming back because they have unfinished business. And so that would be something that he guesses just from seeing some of the zombies who become reanimated and um start to do certain things, which not all of them are chasing down people because oh man, that would be that would be out of control. That would be that oh, that is that's just, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Do you think that makes these zombies scarier because this is a kind of zombie that we don't know what it's gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 22:54

I mean, I I think it makes them more realistic in the fact that, especially the way they said that they reanimate partially. Um, one of the first ones they bump into is in a garage. Um and the zombie, there's like footprints in the oil, and that the person, you know, obviously died doing an oil change or something like that. And then when we see them, they're just standing there, like looking at them. And that's when Ava and um Clay are doing their body retrieval, and we don't know what that person is gonna do. They're just standing still, they're not immediately launching themselves or saying anything, they're grinding their teeth, and it's just pretty scary because you don't know what they're gonna do. And especially because the military has these civilians going in to do this, knowing full well that they're gonna come back. So they don't see any danger at first of any of these people becoming reanimated and becoming hostile. They just know they need to put them down because they're already dead, and that's kind of scary.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

That's a great point, right there. You brought up a very great point that they don't see them as being inherently dangerous at first. Because why would they put these civilians in harm's way, having them go into the houses without weapons? All they let them go in with was a flare to put on when they find someone still alive, and that was it. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

And that makes it but that means that they've already seen them enough. That means also the military has seen these reanimated people. I don't keep saying that because that's how they said it. Uh, they've already seen these reanimated corpses come back, and that's all they think that they need. So that's also pretty scary because they made the decision right away, too, not to take them in or take them somewhere so they could test on them or see what's going on. I thought maybe they might keep some of them or something, and I'm sure they did. They just didn't cover it. You know what I mean? Um, but to have all these people going in, they're just going to put them back down and let them and then bury them. So that's kind of like a it's really creepy. It's really creepy. I know that the the movie is more of a drama, you know, it is big time. And we're getting more into Ava and what was going on with her and her marriage and her long distance that she needs to travel just to get to him. She's willing to go to this other country uh go to another country, go to this island, and do this job of retrieving dead bodies, which is something completely different, and just because she has that one goal of getting to her husband.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Yep. And she is in this foreign, literally, foreign space, and uh going through hell to try to get there, and when she finally is close enough to get there, we see her navigating this space, I mean, very uh smartly, I think, but then she meets up with this soldier who is a part of the I I don't know, he's I I I'm guessing he's part of the Australian um military forces. Yeah. And he uh takes a a scare to her. That's the only way I could scare.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

That's gentle. Okay, she she she bumps into him because there her and Clay run off. Ava and Clay run off on a motorcycle so that they can go get to the resort. And there there enters Riley the soldier. Go on, Nalia.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah, so Riley comes into the picture here, and I don't I don't know. He you you get the sense from the beginning, he's there's something up with him. But uh, we're gonna give him the benefit of the doubt at first. And it's like, oh, okay, Riley's just, you know, doing his his job, going around, surveilling the area, and he finds these two people that are not supposed to be away from the rest of the team, and he's like, okay, rounding him up, get over here. You guys don't belong away from everybody. Now I'm gonna bring you back so that you can go back to where you belong. All right. So you two are back here. Oh no. What's going on here? What's the dude's name again? Um, the soldier or clay? Clay. Clay is gone.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

What happened to Clay? Oh yeah, he said that he ran off. That he ran off while he was questioning him. And so it's just uh Riley the soldier and Ava left.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

So that's not there's nothing wrong with that. Oh no, there's nothing creepy or you know, yeah, there's nothing creepy about the soldier and Ava being alone together now. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Totally normal activity.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Clay left. Okay, well, let's go. I'll take you to um your husband, but I need to stop somewhere along the way. That's what he's he tells her. And she doesn't look like she believes him. I'm gonna tell you. I think that she's on. I think that she's more interested in the fact that this guy is gonna give her a ride than she is too concerned with the fact that Clay's not there with the I again, this okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

This is where I I feel like she her character was written in a way that she's supposed to be this smart, kind of independent um woman that can obviously get shit done. Because here she comes from another country, she's coming here, she's getting her shit done. She's she's going through um uh this this space, this foreign space, this place where, even though we haven't seen it, um where this country is holding some animosity towards her. You know, it was her, you know, it was uh it was her country, the United States, that did this thing against this country, the Australians. And um, again, even though we're not seeing any of this, um it's still gonna be something that she's gotta feel, right? Against her. And then she's also looking for her husband. She something has happened with her husband before before they um had separated ways to to for him to go to the resort, to the retreat. And so she's not she's not uh uh she is a character that is supposed to be, you know, a complete character, I feel. But then she does something stupid like this, like when the soldier is like, okay, I'm gonna take you to the to your husband. Oh, okay. She's like, okay, that's it. You're just gonna be fine with that. It's like she just goes with it. But that's how that's how badly she wants to go see her husband. It's like she she knows again, she knows her husband is dead because there have been no survivors. There are no survivors. She knows her husband is dead. Now, whether she knows her husband is reanimated or come back as a zombie, we keep saying reanimated because that's what they said. But if whether she knows her husband is back, that's another story. That's where it's confusing to me because she goes along with it, even though she knows something's not right.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Okay. So obviously we know something's not right. So Riley the soldier is creepy as hell. He's like, let's stop here along the way. And he um wants to make dinner. Uh he starts talking about how he had his wife here on the island. She was visiting family, and she was pregnant and only had two weeks to go. Um, that is what she finds out. So he's sitting there very calm. He made them food. Ava's just sitting there, like, I came along for this ride, I'm stuck with this man. Um yeah, and he took them a bit out of the way because at one point they show the mileage that she was much closer to the to the resort than when he drove her out to this uh this place where he took her. And so he wants a favor from Ava. It was just a creepy favor. It's a creepy favor. It's it's a it's creepy just to mention I need a favor or something. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

You don't have stranger favors from from strangers. I was gonna say from creepy strangers, but yeah, from strangers.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

No, he wants he wants Ava to do something, and then they show Ava what the favor is, is that the soldier wants her to dress up in his wife's clothes, including her jewelry and wedding ring, so he can have one last dance with her. He even gives her her perfume, and that is the favor. How far is this favor? I mean, she's like, okay, I'll do this if you take me to my husband. Also, because she's she's big time SOL here because she's somewhere she's not supposed to be. There's no people out there because nobody was supposed to travel past a certain area because there are these out-of-control fires that they need to contain before people go through that area, and so she's all alone with this soldier, and she's at his, you know, whatever, and so she's getting dressed and she's ready to do this favor for the soldier, and he just gets scarier, he gets scarier. Now he's not all out raging or or anything like that, he's just obviously lost his mind.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

That's all absolutely. And uh what really gets to me here is that well, obviously she's alone with him, but she can't do anything about it, she's stuck with him. He is in total control of the whole situation, he knows uh this area backwards and forwards because we find out that it's his in-law's place. So he is very familiar with it. So if she even if she tries to get away, you know, he's super familiar with it. Um so everything he's got the advantage here. But um so she's just to say that she's doing this now to go see her husband is the reason that she went through with this. I I don't know if I would have. I mean, from the first start, how does that conversation even go? Hey, uh, I want you to dress up as my wife and I'm gonna dance with you, and then I'll go take you to go see your husband. Oh, okay, let's go do that right now. Oh, yeah. I want you to wear her perfume too.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah, there was no, I don't think, say no. How do you go about telling somebody no? Like, what's he gonna do? I think she's she's just stuck and now she has to make a poor decision, and now she's stuck with the consequences because this is way out of way out of hand. This is not normal. This is um very scary. This is where the movie actually gets scary for you because to this point you've seen a couple of zombies kind of chase after somebody, but that's that's all you've seen. Yeah, that was that ended quickly. Now you're seeing somebody who's just a regular person. That's the part that always gets me.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

People. Yes, people are the real monsters. That's what I always say. Movies where people are the real monsters, that's what's gonna get me. Where people are gonna be the thing that gets you. This in this case, this dude that has it in his head that his, oh yeah, we didn't even mention the part where we said that his wife was pregnant, right? Had two weeks to until uh she gave birth or until her due date. Well, he said, he said that the baby is moving inside the dead wife.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Yeah. Oh yeah. He said he could feel the baby moving around inside the dead wife. Yeah. And how do we, and how do we know because he didn't bury her. He had said he'd buried her at first and buried them, but he didn't. He has the dead wife in bed surrounded by flowers and candles and all kinds of stuff and stuff lay in bed where uh Ava is now trying to get out of the situation because the soldier didn't like that she wouldn't put on the wedding ring that he provided her with. I mean, just a dance. What else was he gonna have her do? Why would he put the jewelry of his dead wife on another woman? We don't know what else he was going to do. So now she's in a fight for her life, for her life to get away from this guy.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Exactly. And like I mentioned earlier, the director. Um, I saw this movie at uh we both did. Did you see it too? Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize you saw it there too. Okay, so we saw this movie when it premiered uh at uh South by Southwest 2025, actually. And um the director was talking about how he that's why I feel kind of bad. He was talking about how he made when he made this film, it had a lot to do with um he had made it after his mom had passed away. So a lot of this movie has to do with some of that grief that he was uh you know working through. Um, and it is a it is a good movie. I'm not saying it isn't. It's just that for me, it kind of feels like the movie's kind of, I don't know, it kind of feels like it's kind of all over the place. Like it doesn't know if it's, you know, is it drama, we're gonna be a zombie movie, or we're gonna be, you know, what's it gonna be here? Because it really because it got into the zombie portion of it, it really dug into it with the zombie, there's a zombie mom, and that gives birth to, and spoiler alert, but we've already said this from the beginning, so you're still here, you're listening. I'm gonna tell you, the zombie mom gives birth to a living baby.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Um spoiler.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Yeah. So that right there is we're giving new um, what's the word I'm looking for? Uh like new uh zombie origins or whatever you want to call it. Because it's not I know it's not a new zombie, a new zombie being born, but it's like a new zombie storyline or a new zombie um, you know, uh, because we have zombies that, you know, like we have our zombies that run fast, we have our zombies that eat brains, and we have our zombies here. Well, in this case, we have our zombies that apparently can give birth to living baby.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yes, and we've seen the zombies that give birth to zombie babies, so we're really aware of that. And so this is something totally strange, new territory.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

And this zombie mom, this is the wife of the soldier, she gave birth to the baby, and she was very uh protective of this baby because what she did was she got the attention that it coincidentally just happened to be Ava, and uh why do I always keep forgetting his name? Clay. And she got their attention and let them know that she had the baby and that the baby was alive and that the baby needed their help. And then the zombie mom walked away. And so that was their uh I guess chance to go and go grab the living baby. I know it sounds so weird just talking about it like this, but that was their chance to go get the living baby and take care of it. And um so yeah, the zombie mom had again those feelings of she was very aware of having some kind of connection to the living, kind of like that dad did when he woke up and he was alive after he, you know, he had died and his family was dead, and he just wanted to bury his loved ones, and then he wanted to be with them. In this case, this mom gave birth to her living baby, and she just wanted her baby to be taken care of. And they clay and Ava took the baby so they could take care of it. So again, just seeing lots of different kinds of things happening around these zombies that you don't normally see in other zombie movies, these being very emotionally driven zombies, very emotionally attached zombies to this world, their living side or their um with when they were alive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, we see that also is really important because Ava and her husband were having issues with her not becoming pregnant. Like in flashbacks, they're showing her um they're trying to make a baby. Um she's not pregnant. And then when she ends up finding him, okay, so we end up she ends up finding her husband at the resort. She gets away from the soldier. Um, they get away, she gets away, she makes it to the hotel, and she finds him there, and in the hotel with an there's another woman there too. Yeah. So he had taken off his wedding ring, it's sitting on the on the kit uh the bathroom sink or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

So her husband was with another woman. Yes. But we can't be mad at him.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Yeah. What happened was she admits to Clay that she had had these issues with fertility. She wanted to start IVF. He didn't want to. They started fighting, they're just, you know, becoming distant a little bit. And Ava has an affair. And then they were supposed to discuss this, but he decides to go ahead and go to the retreat, the resort anyway. And so he goes off to the resort and leaves her behind, and this is when the incident happens. So she did do her part. Now he's doing his part. And she finds him and she's trying to see if he's gonna wake up or not.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Yeah. So when I said we can't be mad at him, I don't mean like we can't be mad at him. I just mean like we can't be mad at him without being upset with her too. Equal parts. Exactly. So if we're upset with him, we gotta be upset with her too. She and she doesn't seem to be upset with him. She just seems very matter-of-fact, like she looks at a picture of the of the badge of the lady that he was with and is like, she's very pretty. She doesn't seem pissed off or anything. She just very matter-of-factly says, She's very pretty. And then she admits, you know, to Clay what what she did and and just very matter-of-factly puts it out there. And I can imagine that must have been very hard. That's why she needed to confront this part for herself to see if maybe she could uh have some kind of conversation. And even though he did he wasn't one of the ones that was uh uh reanimated or came back, she was able to have this conversation with him and close that part of the um conversation with him, you know, she was able to see him, she was able to talk with him, she was able to be with him, I think was most important. She was able to be with him and like Alma said have that closure, but even though it's not real closure, she was able to have some kind of closure with him. And I'm still still so confused why there wasn't more mistrust being or shade being thrown her way. That's I I know maybe it's just me, but she was an outsider in all of this, and she's Oh, okay. Yeah. I I I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep thinking it because like uh I know I think it's because they wanted he the director wanted this movie, I'm sure, to be about a lot of other things than about the fact that this was an American woman being in the thick of an international incident. However, he made the movie about this being an international incident. So why not fucking make a movie about this movie, about this woman being in an international incident? I don't understand it. I'm talking about that now because we've talked about how, you know, the how the zombies have been, we've talked about how Ava has been, we've talked about what happened and everything like that, and the the fucking creepy ass soldier dude that was being fucking inappropriate at all times. But the director made a movie about international incident that wasn't. That really bugs me. That really bugs the shit out of me. They would this was a movie about an international incident that wasn't. The US military created this weapon that went off and killed all these Australians, and then you get a fucking American woman coming in, looking for her husband, eschewing all the rules and doing her own thing, and no one seems to be batting an eye at like, oh, you know, look at her.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

I think it's just too much focus. It's because the movie is too focused on her and her goal. That's that's what it is. The whole movie is about her and her goal.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Oh, I I understand that. But how do you make a movie about a US military incident and not make it about it? Is what I'm saying. That's what's confusing to me. Because I didn't really think about it.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

I just didn't really think about it.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

To me, it to me, it's just confusing. To me, it's confusing. Because I if I then don't make it about that. Then then then make it be vague. Make it be vague, what happened. Don't make it be a movie about the US military did this thing and then have it be an American woman.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

I honestly, yeah. That's just me. Honestly, I didn't even know it was an American incident that happened. I didn't really notice it or pay attention to it or even remember hearing anything about it. I really don't. I just did it. I don't know. I don't even know why. I just know it happened in the beginning, and when they were talking about what happened, I didn't even pay attention to who did it to what. So okay. So it's just a me thing then. It's just me. Well, it's a me thing too, because I didn't pay attention to that, you know? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

All right. So it's just me thinking they should have been heavily distrusting her, even though she didn't have a reason to be distrusted. She and then if they were distrusting her, I would have been all you have no reason to be distrusting her. She just wants to go see her husband. I would have been up all up in arms about that. I would have been give her the benefit of the doubt, dudes. I I would not have been happy either way, apparently. So essentially, this movie for me felt a little bit kind of all over the place. It was a drama that happened to have a I was about to say aliens in it. See? I can't even keep it straight. Happened to have zombies in it.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Uh where the zombies uh yeah, they weren't well-formed ideas of a zombie, I don't think. Just because um they had for a moment there, it seemed like they had an idea of these zombies wanting to be the longer they lived or the longer they were zombies, they would become agitated and more violent. They did give us a glimpse of that, but they didn't really go too much into that um storyline, which is good. I guess, you know, that's fine. Um, you know, we don't always have to see everything. But um they didn't give us a lot of that zombie storyline. It was more of the drama, what was going on with Ava and her searching for her husband, and then the little story going along with the soldier. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Which, yeah. So at the end of the day, it was the soldier who was the scariest person in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Um, definitely. We didn't even mention the fact that he was collecting zombies in the garage of the um oh yeah, house that they were staying at. He in a barn. He had been collecting them and not experimenting, but watching them become you know, keeping track of what they were doing once they became reanimated.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

That's another thing why I think this movie was kind of a little bit scattered because we're showing we're showing all these things happening. Ava go over here looking Ava over here looking for her husband, um, this pregnant zombie about to have a living baby, and then old soldier boy over here, he's uh fucking collecting zombies in the barn for what? What is he collecting them for? You know, we don't know what he's collecting them for.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

I think he's waiting to see if his wife is gonna become reanimated and what will happen to her.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Yeah, but what is he gonna do with these zombies?

SPEAKER_01 52:30

You know more creepy experiments.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Exactly. So I mean uh I this movie just kind of confuses me. I don't hate it. I just don't love it.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

So I actually I I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. It didn't it, I I would say I'm opposite feeling of you. I didn't get confused or anything like that. Or I mean, not get confused. Not that's not what I meant, but I didn't find it confusing. I enjoyed the fact that it was like a drama with some zombies in it. It's definitely different. I wouldn't say I loved it as like, you know, a horror movie or anything like that. I think it was just a very interesting story, and I enjoyed the zombie bits of it, and I really felt like a lot of it was in the thriller action of the soldier side story um that added to it that I might that I made it more interesting for me.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

So would you say that the it's refreshing that it's different, that it's uh has Yes, refreshing, refreshing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Okay, I I I could use that word. Yeah. Um just because it was different in in that type of adding the zombie story to um to this movie.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Okay. Um, and whereas I felt like the shifting tone was uh made it a little unfocused for me. Again, I didn't hate it. It wasn't a bad movie, it was still very well put together. It was honestly, it was it was it was a it was a good enough movie. It wasn't terrible. It just for the themes that it had put out there, I just feel like it was a little bit scattered. But all in all, I I would still say if you could still watch this and be like, okay, you'd come out of it having found something that you might enjoy. All right, Alma, so where do these zombies rank for you as far as zombies go?

SPEAKER_01 54:43

I thought these were pretty good zombies. I do I do like the fact that the it was a a bunch on a mass scale, not necessarily every person becoming reanimated because you know that yeah, that it was just random reanimated corpses. And I do like that when they came back that they were doing that that gnashing with their teeth and the the they call them grinders in the subtitles, grinders. They were grinding their teeth together, oh, really um, and I think it made it a little sadder too, because they were all going in there to remove dead bodies, and what made it worse was that some of them were coming back to life, and I think that made them even better kind of zombie because it made it sadder, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

I I like that it is, it was very I I say depressing, but yeah. Does the um should uh does the movie the fact that the director uh was aiming for a motherhood spin on this movie, does that make change the movie for you a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 55:59

Um I don't know. I wasn't really yeah, I thought it was kind of sad that that was, you know, but it's kind of like when they have a movie and the the woman always, you know, has to be a mother or that kind of thing. It's not really my bag, you know. Yeah, but it did make it interesting for her because it came kind of full circle with her ending up finding a little baby that maybe she could keep. Yeah, and maybe she can yeah, and I was like, maybe she'll have an interesting story to tell that little baby one day. Uh, your dad, I met him once, and he tried to keep me and make me his wife. He kept zombies in the garage.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Did the movie feel like uh it was uh well, I've I've touched upon this lots of times already, but did it feel like it understood its own zombie mythology? Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure about that. I don't think I don't I personally don't think so. That's my answer to that question because I'm gonna say not sure. I I think it it it felt like it was trying to build it a couple of times, but then it was like it didn't do a very good job of I mean I don't expect it to having fully formed it, but I th I would like it to have been at least well thought out of in the background. That way when um certain things happened, it would have lead made sense. Um and I I don't think it really did because like when we had the case of um they were very um emotionally centered, I think. Um and then you get the um the agitation aspect of it later on. It's like, okay, connect them for me somehow. I wanted them to be connected somehow. Um, and then you get them being kept in the barn. And then, okay, why are we keeping them in the barn? How are we keeping them alive in the barn? Give me more of that story if you're gonna be keeping them in the barn. Don't just, you know, give me little half pieces here and there. I don't know. That's just for me. If you're gonna make me give me a movie about zombies, you gotta give me a little bit more about that. But granted, this movie was probably not supposed to be completely about zombies. It's supposed to be about the story of Ava looking for her husband and you know and that. So ultimately, this was a movie about grief and a grief movie that just happened to have zombies in it. So circling back to the the themes of motherhood and from the beginning, Ava wanting to be a mother, seeing that this zombie mom gave birth, she was able to save this baby, and whether she gets to mother this child or not, she was able to save this child, and you know, save a child that was wouldn't have uh been saved otherwise if she hadn't gone out there. Because uh yeah, the only reason that you know That's true.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

Yeah. Because there was nobody out there.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

There's nobody out there out there. Yep. Okay, so that was we bury the dead. We bury the dead? Is that what it's called? We bury the dead. All right. So yeah. What was your overall, I guess, if you want to sum it up feelings on this?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:00

Well, I think I think I've covered it pretty well. I liked it. I really enjoyed the movie. I do I did like the little zombie aspect putting it up, but it's just a it is a different kind of movie for me. Usually I'm not for the um the drama movies, and I'm really not for that kind of uh the storyline, the woman with with her um with the themes of motherhood and things like that. I'm really not usually the kind of movie that I'm liking. But I actually enjoyed this one because of the zombie aspect. I think for me, adding the zombie bits to it made the movie more enjoyable for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

I like that. So for you, you can grab a movie, any movie, throw in some zombies, and you got a winner. I'll pay attention to it. You know what? I like that. I like that. Whereas over here, I'm being all like, I'm being a Debbie Downer, and I'm like, ah, this movie is just not my cup of tea and all this jazz. Whereas you're like, if you take a movie and you throw in some zombies, I've got it. It's for me. But uh yeah, so I was a little hard on it, yeah. But like I said, I it's uh it's still it's it's watchable. It's a watchable movie. Just for me, it was just I I just had some issues with it. Mainly the fact that they made this movie about an international incident movie being not an international incident movie. It just really bugged me. I'm sorry, it's gonna keep bugging me. And I can live with the fact that a zombie movie isn't about zombies either. But the international incident movie not being about an international incident discuss. All right, let's, yeah, that's that's weird to me. But, anyways, so that's that's my feelings on this movie. And that was this week's movie, We Bury the Dead. All right, so for next week, we shall discuss another movie that shall be named at a later time. Um, and Alma, where can people find us on the interwebs? Because that's what we want people to do. Find us on the interwebs and give us uh ideas of movies to discuss and tell us what they want to hear about and uh all that good jazz.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

Well, you can visit us on our website, thegory detailspodcast.com, over on Instagram, we're thegory podcast, on blue sky, where the gory details, and you can visit us on buy me a coffee dot com slash the gory details.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

All right, everybody, thank you for listening until next week. Bye. Bye bye.