STAR WARS' Daisy Ridley Was Pushed to Her Limit in New Zombie Horror WE BURY THE DEAD

Daisy Ridley is stepping far outside the galaxy far, far away with We Bury the Dead, a bleak and emotionally draining zombie horror that writer-director Zak Hilditch says demanded more from the actor than anything she’s done before.

According to Hilditch, that challenge was exactly what pulled Ridley into the project so quickly. The film also stars Brenton Thwaites, and it puts a fresh spin on post-apocalyptic horror.

Ridley plays Ava, a physical therapist who travels to Tasmania after the US accidentally detonates an experimental weapon off the island’s eastern coast. The blast wipes out Hobart, where Ava’s husband Mitch was staying on business. With no confirmation of his fate, Ava clings to the hope that he might still be alive and sets out to find him.

Hilditch says Ridley came on board almost instantly after reading the script. "She was the first one cast. We sent the script out to her and within one week, we were zooming and we were off to the races," Hilditch tells GamesRadar+.

"She was all in and… it will never happen that way again. It continues to never happen on other projects, like, it was just so quick. But sometimes, like with 1922, these planets align. Just as I couldn't imagine anyone but Thomas Jane pulling off the role of Wilfred James [in Netflix's 1922], Daisy just is Ava, so I'm just so glad that she responded to it."

While Ava’s search for Mitch drives the story, survival is only part of the nightmare. Many of the weapon’s victims didn’t stay dead. Some regained motor function despite being brain dead, becoming violent and unpredictable.

The military assigns the remaining survivors grim roles, from protection duty to disposing of bodies, creating a fractured society built on fear and exhaustion. That emotional and physical toll lands squarely on Ridley’s shoulders, and Hilditch says she fully embraced it.

"[Daisy] just gave her absolute all. I hadn't seen her do anything quite like this before, and I think she also got a lot out of, like, doing something that was going to push her to her limit," he says.

"Yeah, she just got to try things out there she hasn't probably been able to try out yet. The whole movie rests on her shoulders, and you're just completely engrossed every second she's on screen.

“You're just rooting for her, you know? [Her character] takes so many hits throughout the movie that, you know, we're really on her side by the time everything comes out in the wash."

Along the way, Ava crosses paths with Clay, a cleanup worker who approaches the apocalypse with a surprisingly relaxed attitude. The two don’t click at first, but form an uneasy partnership when Ava convinces him to abandon his post, revive a motorcycle, and head toward Woodbridge, where Mitch was last seen.

Hilditch designed Clay as Ava’s complete opposite, both emotionally and morally. "I just love movies where you've got someone's yin to someone's yang. From a writing point of view, it was like, 'Okay, who's the worst person she could be paired up with?'

“It had to be someone who's just exhibiting the complete opposite traits that Ava has. So it had to be the Aussie who'll say whatever the fuck he wants; the perfect stick of dynamite to throw into the movie. [Brenton] gets all the best lines, he gets all the best laughs.

"It's [been] so good watching the movie with audiences. I've been on a festival junket all year, which has been just amazing, seeing how people respond to Clay and how those gags land in a very organic way – when you're wrapped up in the emotion and the tension, it'll be broken by Brenton.

“He's such a great actor; he's got all that everyman charm, he's oozing sex appeal, and I can't wait for the rest of the world to see him in this different light."

Best known to many for her role in Star Wars, Ridley is clearly carving out new territory here, anchoring a horror film that lives or dies by her performance. If Hilditch’s comments are any indication, We Bury the Dead shows a side of her audiences haven’t seen yet.

We Bury the Dead is out now in US theaters.