Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead,” for example), but as the film progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Hilditch is not aiming to produce another standard zombie horror. Rather, he presents audiences with a narrative centered on personal struggles, involving the undead only tangentially, while prioritizing the experiences of the living and their abilities (or inability) to deal with bereavement and sorrow.
The storyline revolves around Ava Newman (Daisy Ridley), an American physical therapist, who becomes part of a team of volunteers dispatched to Tasmania to identify the deceased following a US experimental weapon that inadvertently devastates Hobart, resulting in the majority of the island’s inhabitants being killed. Some of the deceased, however, are inexplicably returning from the brink of death in an essentially comatose state. Newman is hopeful that her husband (who was on the island during the event) is among them, and she is determined to rescue him. However, as she collaborates with another volunteer named Clay (Brenton Thwaites), and they identify hundreds of the departed, she gradually comes to understand that the likelihood of reviving whatever this phenomenon is, is nearly non-existent. Despite this, she remains relentless in her quest to locate her partner, whether he is dead, alive, or something entirely different.