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It may be some time before fans get to see Daisy Ridley reprise her role as Rey in Star Wars, but that isn’t stopping them from seeing her kick ass as an axe-wielding vigilante in an upcoming horror film called We Bury the Dead.
In We Bury the Dead, directed by Zak Hilditch, Riley plays a woman called Ava, retrieving bodies following a disastrous military experiment in Tasmania. While the thankless job of corpse retrieval is risky enough, Ava’s willingness to take on the job stems from her desperation to uncover whether or not her husband is among the casualties. Somewhere along her frantic journey, burying bodies (as the title signposts), Ava discovers the undead have turned into zombies. While this point of the film’s logline reads like any other ragamuffin zombie flick, Ava is nonplussed by her perilous situation and takes matters into her own hands, which have an axe affixed to them. Badass. And apparently, director Hilditch agrees.
“Having Daisy play the role of Ava is an absolute dream come true,” Hilditch, whose previous credits include Stephen King adaptation 1922 for Netflix, said in an October interview with Deadline. “She embodies the perfect mix of vulnerability, grit, and determination that Ava exudes throughout the film.”
Ridley has kept herself busy in the long wait for her return to the galaxy far, far away as part of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s planned “New Jedi Order” film, set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. Most recently she made a wave, quite literally, back with Disney portraying Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, in Joachim Rønning’s Young Woman and the Sea. But even as Star Wars‘ future remains in flux, Ridley remains excited to trade her axe in for a lightsaber once more.
“Why wouldn’t I [do it]? Yes, [Star Wars movies] have been divisive, but also they bring a lot of love and joy to a lot of people,” Ridley told Empire earlier this year about her return to Star Wars. “It feels pretty amazing to be able to continue a character–like, can I even remember how to play her? It’s an interesting challenge as an actor to come back to something and try to figure out what’s changed for me and what’s changed for her.”
We Bury the Dead was first announced last October. According to Variety, the film will premiere in November at Australia‘s Adelaide Film Festival.
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