They Came Back (2004)

Let me save everyone 2 hours of their life. So, "zombies", i use that term loosely, come back from the dead. Why? you don't know and you wont find out either. They are integrated back into society....cue the hour and a half of nothingness. Talking, talking, and more talking........OK, some bombs go off and a kid jumps off a balcony, sounds cool right? things are picking up right? wrong. The end. So my review doesn't make sense, exactly, neither does this piece of crap movie. Why are there zombies, how are there zombies, what are they doing, and where are they going....you'll never find out. The only good IMDb scores come from people who wanna pretend they're artsy and "get it". They don't get it and they know this movie blows. Spend your 2 hours trying to bite your own ear, at least it's entertaining to someone, unlike this crap.

If you like zombies, then you must certainly find 70 million of them to be a real delight. In fact, in the town in this film, 13,000 returned from the dead.But, you will be disappointed in the fact that there is no blood or gore, no eating of brains. This is just what the French do best - give us a film that makes us think for 103 minutes.Yes, they have come back, but they marched peacefully into town. They looked as if they were just buried yesterday, even though some had bee gone for 10 years. Mostly old, there were some infants and in one of the three families featured, a six-year-old.It is curious that the French do not get upset; they proceed to develop plans to temporarily resettle the zombies while they learn their identities and check them out medically. They, of course, make plans to repatriate them to their families and jobs and make provisions for assistance - most are over 60, as you would expect.But, the film focuses on three families: one who lost a six-year-old four years ago, one whose wife lost her husband, and one elderly couple reunited. All those questions of how you deal with loved ones returning after you have already grieved keep popping through your mind. Sometimes, in the case of the parents and child, there are different responses.The film does not explore why they came back, and why they suddenly leave again. It is more concerned with how people deal with death. It is a thoughtful film that really keeps your attention, even though some complain about its slowness. Well, of course it is slow, it is a film about zombies.

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.

The horror... the horror!No, the movie's nothing frightening, but in fact, it bored me to tears. You can literally take a leak, go to the snack bar, have a smoke, and return to the theatre, missing absolutely nothing. Half the time I was wondering whether something remotely interesting will crop up midway to quicken the pace, but I was dead wrong. The movie is meant to be painfully and excruciatingly slow, for it to bring forth its philosophy about life and death, and its abstract ideas about existentialism.The big question presented, though it is hardly ever gonna come true anyway, is how will society react if the dead suddenly became alive again? The issues that are posed, from housing to employment to health care and even human rights (!), are those that are any government's nightmare. The movie begins with stoned elderly folks walking, and walking, and walking some more when the opening credits rolled, until it is said that the dead are walking the earth, and are quickly scrambled to makeshift holding areas while awaiting the relatives to come claim them, and for everyone else to try and make sense of this phenomenon.Perhaps Heaven is getting crowded, or Hell has frozen over, that the departed need to return to the land of the living. They do not crave the blood of man, but rather, are finding ways to integrate back into society. Herein lies the opportunity for philosophy that is unappreciated by myself. There are different viewpoints presented via various characters, but all that is worth recalling, is that the dead are not pleased to be alive, and those alive are absolutely clueless as to what to do next. Bottom line is, let sleeping dogs lie.One thing's for sure, I don't really like abstract zombies. Give me those that crave for flesh and blood anytime!