Eles Voltaram

This film stirs a few emotional quandaries, many of which a viewer may choose not to explore. If the purpose of film is to generate thought and reflection as much as to entertain, 'Les Revenants' succeeds by virtue of it's creepy essence and the personal and social problems we'd encounter as individuals if faced with the reality of having our dead loved ones come back to us. The subject is handled cleverly and touchingly by the director who never attempts to drive our view but allows the characters to help us define our feelings. Particularly perplexing for a parent who might give just about anything to see their fallen child again. The misty night scenes, serene almost drugged manner with which the dead carry themselves and the evolution of divided feelings regarding their return by the living give the film an ethereal pace which may disappoint flesh hungry zombie fans.

Well, anyone who's been to a 'zombie' movie knows that nothing good can come from bringing the dead back to life, but director Robin Campillo presents a more interesting dilemma. How would a society accommodate and re-integrate their loved ones and relatives if they suddenly came walking out of the cemetery with clean clothes, no illnesses, and energy to spare.

What director Campillo has done is replaced 'scary' with 'eerie' as a local government struggles to shelter and re-located hundreds of the town's former inhabitants. In addition, the town's mayor must decide whether people can return to their old jobs, their old lives, or whether they should be studied to determine how all this came about.

Film takes a very matter-of-fact approach to sifting through a population influx, much like having a large group of refugees arrive in your town. The local scientists do make some early discoveries involving reduced sleep patterns, lower body, temperature, and how these 'arrivals' may only be acting normal as memory response.

If you enjoyed last year's "Time Out" (which Campillo co-wrote), then you'll also appreciate this spooky, but 'non-flesh eating', dead people coming back to life cinema experience. In some ways having your ex-wife come back can be scarier than a zombie, eh guys?

After I realized this movie is not a horror or a trash one, just because it has zombies in its plot I thought it has a great creative mind behind the story; however, when the movie ended I felt there was something missing in the story. The movie does not care much about explaining its core issue that is about the coming of the dead people themselves. Why did they return to live if all they want is to go to the tunnels? It does not say where the tunnels will lead them. To heaven or to hell? to the Elygian fields? to Mars? or to some new dimension? I would not bother if the movie was longer just to explain this part carefully. If so,the movie would be brilliant. Unfortunately it is not a brilliant movie. It is only good to make us think about the crazy hypothesis that the movie is talking about, which is, at least, interesting. My note is to say that according to my own interpretations, the movie never tries to sound funny as some other critics say, but tragic and hypothetical. People are never prepared to welcome their dead relatives with eager if they knock at their door after some years of "absence", even if you love them so much.

Let's get this out of the way first: I watched this because I'm obsessive about the wonderful French TV series of the same name, and in the absence of the never-to-be-made season 3 this seemed worth a try to alleviate my withdrawal symptoms!

And I was not disappointed. It's not a patch on the outstanding TV show (but then what is?). However it is a haunting, thought-provoking slow burner which is, ultimately, a melancholy meditation on love, grief and the meaning of human identity.

And we should be very, very grateful to this movie for inspiring the kind of gentle, confused, almost human zombie that eventually gave us those unmissable two seasons of TV.

I was stunned by this one - from the opening sequence on I was completed transfixed. The slow and melancholy pacing, the morose blue filters, the long silences and the fixed stares, all combined to create a spacious and powerfully - almost painfully - introspective viewing experience.

This is a remarkable meditation on the Zombie sub-genre as well, although clearly partaking of something quite well beyond that more limited scope. No corpse-eating ghouls here: just a fascinating "what if" that raises painful questions about what we do with death and the dead in our own collective imagination. In this particular return of the repressed, being forced to mull over the tedious, bureaucratic details of what would have to happen if hundreds of millions of dead people suddenly reappeared in our midst actually serves to engage the viewer in a very personal way. I found myself interrogating myself over and over about what kind of response I would have in a similar situation, and identifying with the film's protagonists on all sorts levels, and the experience was quite moving.

All the nuances of grief and mourning were shockingly subtle and well-conceived, as well as superbly acted.

The whole time I was watching I kept thinking: "Thank god for the French!" Such a movie could simply never arise from Hollywood.