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Zak Hilditch has heaped praise on Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, admitting that he found it "unavoidable" not to be influenced by the hit franchise when he made new zombie horror We Bury the Dead.
"Not only did it revolutionize the zombie movie, I think it revolutionized cinema," the writer-director, who's perhaps best known for helming Netflix's 2017 Stephen King adaptation 1922, gushes to GamesRadar+. "That idea of elevated genre that then started banding about was leveled right at 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle… I'm such a Trainspotting die-hard… it was just like, 'Is this even happening? Can you do this? Can you shoot a movie and make it look bad on the [Canon] XL1? It is about the end of the world, so I'm kind of here for it?' No one saw that movie coming and it runs deep in my roots as a filmmaker."
While Hilditch is a big fan of the gritty, frenetic 28 Days Later, it's interesting how We Bury the Dead actually resembles 2024's 28 Years Later more closely; both movies being more concerned with loss and the personal, emotional aftermath of an apocalypse over bloody violence and the darkness of man. Featuring Brenton Thwaites (DC's Titans) and Star Wars' Daisy Ridley, it follows Ava, a physical therapist who travels from the US to Tasmania, Australia to track down her missing husband Mitch.
She's not heard from him since before the States accidentally detonated an experimental weapon and wiped out Hobart, a city close to where Mitch was staying on a business trip – but Ava hasn't given up hope that he could still be alive.
Her search hits a snag, though, when she assigned a role in the 'Body Retrieval Unit' by the Australian government, and tasked with clearing out the nearby homes of those who died in the aftermath of the explosion. Fortunately for Ava, her new work partner is a bit of a free-spirited loose canon who inspires her to ditch her duties and head south to Mitch's hotel in Woodbridge.
"I didn't want to be copying anything in 28 Days Later when it came time to do my own zombie movie," adds Hilditch. "It's partly unavoidable, though, because it did completely change the game so much. All I could do was offer audiences what they know and love about zombie movies, but if I could turn the screws just enough to warrant having my own zombie movie enter the canon, then that's all I was here for."
While it's still bursting with bloody undead action, Hilditch's focus in We Bury the Dead is the concept of lost time. In amongst all those classic post-apocalyptic frights, it proves that the scariest thing of all might actually missing your chance to say or do certain things – and, worse, having to live with that.
"I do feel like, without giving anything away, ours is an interesting twist on the whole premise of zombies – and something I hadn't seen in cinema before," the filmmaker concludes. "So It's a delicate balance of having your cake and eating it, too. Like, you want to make a thrilling zombie movie and audiences expect certain things, but I also wanted to go completely over here as well and just do my own thing and, like, say something different. Hopefully we managed to straddle that line."
We Bury the Dead is out in US theaters now, and arrives on Digital HD in the UK on February 2. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.
