I myself am not a fan of France and anything French, unless of course it’s Daft Punk. However, I stumbled across this TV series sometime in August, and just had to watch it. The only way I could possibly find out about this show, ironically enough, was by listening to one song off the soundtrack (which is written by Scottish band Mogwai) and thinking “Hey, this sounds really creepy and weird. I want more of it!’
Les Revenants, whose English title translates precisely to The Returned is a creation of French director and writer Fabrice Gobert. The series is an adaptation of a 2004 French movie “They Came Back’ — while the movie had a more general aspect to it, the series itself will apparently answer more questions and have less characters than the movie had, to better give focus to the main cast. One of the original members from the film, Frédéric Pierrot, also has a major part in the series.
The show focuses on a small Alpine town where, as in all other places in the world, bad things have happened. The town’s main feature appears to be a dam, and the place itself is quiet and rather dreary. That is, of course, until the dead come back to life.
Now this isn’t your typical zombie resurrection. There’s no virus suddenly going around turning people into flesh eaters, there’s no apocalypse or end-of-days happening. In fact, there’s no real explanation. The dead have just come back to life, only for some reason they don’t look dead. They’re not rotting, smelly, or in any way after your brains. They look just as healthy as they did the day before they died, and they don’t even remember dying. In short, they could totally pass off as normal people. The problem is their loved ones are recognizing them.
The show switches focus between flashbacks of the dead, and trying to understand how they ended up six feet under, and the adjustment of both the living and the dead to this new time years after they’ve been buried. A young girl who died in a bus accident, a man who died under mysterious circumstances, a little boy who speaks to no one, and that’s only amongst the “dead’. We’re also treated to a host of living characters: police officers, home-calling nurses, a religious fanatic, and a very shady bartender with a strange connection to both the living and the dead.
The episodes count up to eight so far, taking on the popular TV trope of Alternating Protagonists, where each episode focuses on one of the “zombies’ more particularly than others, and reveals certain secrets to their demise. Throughout the whole of the series, we are also led to believe that the dam slowly malfunctioning has something to do with the fact that the dead have returned, along with the fact that there might be a reason for them returning, one that is unclear to us right now.
All in all, I give the French three-thumbs up for this brilliant masterpiece — the cinematography, the writing, the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, and the stunning acting that ties everything together makes the series a worthwhile watch for anyone, even if they might not be that interested in zombie movies. Trust me, this is not your typical story.
Although in French, you need not hassle about brushing up on your Francais for the series itself is now available with English subtitles.
So go forth and enter a small town where things aren’t quite what they seem, where the water sometimes comes up green and murky, and where a mysterious murderer waits for you at the underpass, so don’t forget to never walk alone at night.