The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Four and a half thousand years ago, the Sumerian civilization existed in the land we now call Iraq. In a surviving work of their literature, deciphered from a baked clay tablet, we learn that their goddess of love, named Inanna (who was called Ishtar by the later Babylonians), threatened to go down to the Underworld and smash the doors, saying: 'And all the dead will get out, and they will outnumber the living.' This ancient fear of our species, explicitly documented circa 2500 BC but really extending throughout the entire history of mankind, is explored in this strange and eerie French film, which has now inspired a popular French television series of the same original title and theme. This film is entitled in French LES REVENANTS, which means THE RETURNED, and that is the title used now on the DVD release with English subtitles, though the cinema release with subtitles a few years ago was as THEY CAME BACK, a title which has now been abandoned, so that the continuity may be clear to purchasers that this is the basis of the TV series, which is making a hit. Essentially, this is a film about zombies, but it is not at all a horror film, and none of them stagger around making gormless noises and bashing people. Nor are they comical, in the hysterically funny mode of SHAUN OF THE DEAD with Simon Pegg (2004, see my review), which by strange coincidence came out in the same year as this film, for this film portrays zombies very seriously and thoughtfully, and is as far from being a comedy as you can get. The study of the 'returned dead' is extremely sophisticated. One day, without explanation, large numbers of recently dead people are seen walking from the cemetery back into a provincial French town. They are all physically fit but rather dazed and uncommunicative. In this town alone, 13,000 of them suddenly appear, having left their graves. They are not at all threatening, but are quiet and reserved and, somewhat ominously, all seem to have an understanding with one another. We are told that millions of 'returned dead' have appeared all over France, and some satire creeps into the film here, because meetings are held in which various politically correct people insist that the human rights of these dead people must be respected, they must all have their old jobs back, and their pensions must be reinstated. Most of them are elderly, but there are a few younger ones and children. Extensive bureaucracy then grinds into slow motion, as the returnees are identified and kept in a compound, sleeping on bunks before being reunited with their families. But then it is noticed that they are not sleeping, but merely pretending to sleep. It is also noticed that their body temperatures are all five degrees lower than normal. They are hyper-active and begin to have secret meetings at night while 'living humans' are asleep. They become increasingly restless and seem continually to want to flee, but it is not clear to where they wish to flee. They have mostly lost their memories, which come back to them slowly, although they are perfectly capable of speaking fluently when they need to, and of carrying out any daily tasks. They remember where they used to live and recognise their family members. But they appear to be incapable of relating to any living person emotionally, or having any feelings. Hence, there are no tearful reunions and desperate huggings. They are distant, and the living humans are made very uncomfortable by their presence, so that many people refuse to see the returned dead whom they had once loved. This is a very strange film indeed, very much under-stated, and hence all the more effective for that reason. This wonderfully evocative and mysterious film was the first film directed by Robin Campillo, and it was an impressive debut, done with great skill. He has just completed his second film, EASTERN BOYS (2013), which is apparently not yet released. Campillo also wrote this film, jointly with Brigitte Tijou. It is no wonder that this provocative and disturbing examination of one of our deepest fears has inspired a television series, for it is easy to think of endless episodes in which further and further layers of mystery are peeled away from this nearly inexhaustible subject. After all, the subject of zombies is never really dead, even though they themselves are.

Thousands of recently deceased rise from the grave without reason or warning and re-enter the world of the living. The dead are unharmed, in good health, and nonthreatening. They're brought to a hospital quarantine to be studied before being released into society. As the dead are deemed safe, the community attempts to readjust to the reentry of thousands of the forgotten into the workforce and their daily lives. Can the community and the dead reconvene properly or will the oddity of the situation and the difficulty in dealing with it be too much for the living?While certainly more of a fantasy/sci-fi (like a more serious Cocoon, for example), Les Revenants offers some truly chilling and frightening moments, and treats us to a more psychological fear than a visual one. The thought of all of our recently deceased loved ones returning from the grave, while seeming like a pleasant idea at first, still chills me to the core. . . How would we deal with it? What of the return of the bad people: the murderers, the rapists, the paedophiles? Do they return as well? What happens to those convicted of murder? Are there sentences lessened since the murder is now voided when the victim walks among us? It's the questions that haunt us that makes this a horror film, and a damn fine one at that. It's certainly not for everyone, but those looking for a beautifully written and filmed story, about loss and recovery. . . I highly suggest Les Revenants aka They Came Back.Final verdict: 8/10.-AP3-

I rented this movie expecting an "avant-zombie" film, and ended up with a healthy dose of philosophical inquiry. The premise is the return of thousands of newly dead residents to a small French town, and the logistical problems involved with having to make room for them. Some return to their previous jobs, relationships, and families, while the strays are housed and studied in a barracks type hospital. Everything about the "zombies" seem to suggest that they are capable of living relatively normal lives, except for their strange activity at night, surplus of energy, and lower body temperatures. Everything except their complete lack of emotion and spontaneous thought. Instead they rely heavily on past memories and mimicked speech in order to function. As the film approaches its end, those living members who have welcomed their dead relatives back are left empty and confused. Eventually, the undead simply escape to tunnels, are shot down, or simply vanish, leaving the viewer, as well as the characters in the movie wanting for more. My feeling about this film is that it is trying to make the statement that "bodies" themselves are not us. Though "they came back" they really did not come back. That is- the soul or the essence that makes someone who they are is not simply the body, but something far more, and that never came back.

I found it to be a very good, eerie, sometimes creepy, but certainly emotionally disturbing film.Okay, if you expected to see flesh-ripping granny's who leave their denture sets in bloodied victims, you might get disappointed. This certainly is not a horror/action movie.One of Ray Bradbury's MARTIAN CHRONICLES told about one of the first earth expeditions on Mars, where they found a small town just like home, in the USA. Its inhabitants were deceased family members, loved ones of our astronauts, who completely forgot their mission and went off to the people they once said goodbye to. Bradbury's story end rather horrible, but the emotional quality is certainly here. And people who have experienced that their grandparents died, or their parents, or a brother or a sister, your wife or husband, know how it is to fantasize that their loved ones come back. Well, LES REVENANTS plays it out that they do come back. And what next?