Shooting has officially wrapped on Star Wars hero Daisy Ridley’s zombie film, We Bury the Dead, which has been filming in Albany this month.
The West Australian was given exclusive access to the set of director Zak Hilditch’s latest movie on a day the production had closed down Marine Drive in the town’s picturesque Middleton Beach suburb.
The film follows Ridley’s Ava character, who joins a body retrieval unit after a military experiment goes horribly wrong, irradiating the township and bringing the dead back to life.
On the day The West was on set, Ridley was fighting for her life in an overturned bus, with the former Jedi showing she hasn’t forgotten how to defend herself in a precarious situation.
Hilditch, who previously helmed the excellent apocalyptic thriller These Final Hours, told The West Australian We Bury the Dead wasn’t just any zombie flick.
“It’s one thing to talk about a Daisy Ridley movie, but when you hear it’s a Daisy Ridley zombie movie, people lean in, and it’s amazing how much weight that word ‘zombie’ has,” the director said.
“Daisy legitimised the movie by coming on board and being so passionate about it, and I can’t wait for the world to see her in this light, doing what she’s doing on screen, because she’s absolutely crushed it.”
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales star Brenton Thwaites plays Clay in the film, who works with Ava in the body retrieval unit.
Now the production has finished, Thwaites will be racing back to his life in Queensland and a wife who is 37 weeks pregnant, but he said it was an “easy decision” to join Hilditch’s project.
“Obviously the Daisy Ridley part of it, I mean, she’s fantastic,” Thwaites said. “She’s a star, I’ve seen her in so many movies, she’s a great actress, and she has an ability to really capture audiences with silence.”
Hilditch hopes We Bury the Dead will hit Australian cinemas before the end of the year, which would cap a bumper period for screen production in WA.
The current production boom has included Nicolas Cage’s visit to WA last year to shoot The Surfer and Sam Neill’s arrival for Season 2 of The Twelve, as well as an adaptation of Holden Sheppard’s award-winning novel Invisible Boys, which was filming in Geraldton earlier this month.
Such is the demand for crew right now, Screenwest is hoping to poach West Aussies from other industries, particularly electricians, designers and accountants, to consider moving into the screen industry.
After a successful launch in Victoria and NSW, Set Educated is a one-day workshop that provides an introduction to the screen industry and showcases what kind of crewing jobs are currently available in WA.
It’s happening on May 4, and places are available from screencareers.com.au.
