We Bury the Dead review – Daisy Ridley tackles the undead in solid zombie twist

Star Wars alum gives an impressively modest performance in this slightly smarter-than-average survival tale Unlike some other less resilient horror subgenres, the zombie movie is, fittingly, never going to really die. Neither will film-makers attempting to add their own twist, understandable given how repetitive the die, wake up, lumber, bite and repeat formula has become. Australian director Zak Hilditch’s attempt, the rather buried We Bury the Dead, is therefore not quite as striking as it might have seemed a decade and change ago. Using words such as “contemplative” and “mournful” to describe a film that includes its fair share of gnarly head-smashing has become something of a cliche, so much so that last month’s meta-comedy Anaconda reboot had its characters joke that these days, even a film about a giant snake needs “intergenerational trauma” to work. But Hilditch mercifully avoids drowning his film in drab self-seriousness. Yes, it’s a zombie survival thriller that’s also abo...

‘They just make you happy’: the Queensland farmers who took a chance on a million sunflowers

Battling drought, Jenny and Russell Jenner tore out their failing crops. Could fields of sunflowers for selfies save their Queensland farm?

There is the smell of freshly cut hay as you travel the country road towards the yellow that dusts the landscape in the distance. Row upon row of sunflowers run away down the hills. Little bursts of sunshine sway on the top of tall stems. With their bright optimistic faces – their sheer yellowness – they reach towards the sun, bringing the positive.

But in 2021 there was no yellow in this landscape. Everything was brown, dead, desiccated in the heat haze. After seven years of drought the Moogerah Dam in south-east Queensland’s scenic rim was nearly empty. “There was no water left,” says Jenny Jenner, “and they were cutting off our allocation. And you can’t grow anything without water.” The quaint country towns in the area were depressed; no one was buying seed, fertiliser, fuel or food. “It wears people down,” the farmer adds. “You forget what years and years of drought do to people and the stress that it puts them under. I was trying to think, how could we diversify the farm? I was trying to think out of the box.

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