This eerie French drama, from director Robin Campillo, sees its DVD release cunningly timed for when the TV series based on it – Channel 4′s The Returned – is currently picking up more momentum than a zombie in a monster truck.
Set in a small French town, the film opens with scenes of hoards of – mainly elderly – people calmly walking the streets. It turns out they are the recently dead, returned healthy and unharmed to their families and jobs. No one is green, no one has their arm hanging off or an axe in their head – the returned residents are all healthy, just a little slow. And they sure do stare a lot.
And this understated not-quite-normalcy is the beauty of the film – it’s not a gorefest, in fact it does all it can to go against that grain. Instead, it explores the [crazily] inevitable emotional turmoil of the deep joy and unrest at having a dead loved one return, and the inevitable sense of unease when you realise that they are no longer the person you knew – and in that case, who are they? The discovery of the returnees’ ‘otherness’ as they undergo tests and observation progresses throughout, as the distrust of them grows.
The bubbling sense of disquiet and creepiness keeps you hooked, though the threat never really comes to fruition. Some might find this an anti-climax, but to have anything more brash would thwart the careful subtlety that makes it so unnerving.
Danielle has awarded Les Revenants three Torches of Truth
