One day, millions of people who have died over the last decade get back up and return to their hometowns. They seem healthy (despite a low body temperature), they’ve retained their memories, and they can interact pleasantly enough with regular folks (whom I'll call “living”).

The initial problem is what to do with them all: Where can they be housed before being reunited with their families? Can they return to their old jobs? How can the living adjust to the sudden reappearance of deceased loved ones? But these “returnees” are not quite the same people they used to be, and as folks start to wonder where they keep going at night, things gradually take a turn for the more sinister.

Focusing on one small town in France, They Came Back is as slow as the walking dead themselves; most of the drama that the characters go through is entirely internal, and in more than one way it reminded me of Tarkovsky’s Solaris; the unsettling reunions provide a way for individuals to face themselves. The focus on characters and their quiet puzzlement also echoed the zombie films of Jean Rollin (maybe it’s a French thing), only of course without the excessive gore and nudity. If gore and nudity are all you’re looking for, there are plenty of more suitable zombie flicks out there -- but you’d be missing a truly haunting, moving film if you avoid this one.

Much of the movie is oddly creepy, such as shots of hundreds of slow returnees filling the streets. But beyond the creepiness is a pervading sense of loss, or that vaguely hollow feeling like somehow the world has become emptier. Many of the living seem to be grappling with this feeling as they try to draw their deceased loved ones back into their lives (or else keep them at arm’s length). At the same time, the strangely indifferent returnees don’t fully seem to recognize or react to the world, at least in terms of evolving experience. It’s hard for both the living and the returned to move forward when their understanding and interactions are largely pieced together from the past.

Excellent, understated acting all around. Performances of the living range between deeply emotional and emotionally suppressed, always effectively. Those playing the returnees are often so blank that I found myself unwittingly reading things into their blankness: Were they confused? Content? Plotting? This only added to the overall ambiguity to the film (of which there’s a lot). Stylistically, They Came Back also makes excellent use of color and sound. For example, as the movie opens with returnees leaving a cemetery, their oppressively loud shuffling sounds and the continuous, almost droning background music contrast eerily with the openness of the outdoors and the ethereality of the returnees’ mostly white clothing.

Other Thoughts
I won’t say too much here, except that the premise allows not just for psychological examination, but for consideration of certain broad social dynamics as well. The society of the living, often represented in regular city council meetings, always seems to find new ways to restrict the returnees, while rationalizing their decisions as steps in reintegrating the returnees optimally or as being in the best interest of the living. But once the returnees begin wandering away from their homes and congregating with each other, folks become concerned, and either try to hold on to them more tightly or react with paranoia. Largely this is a look at the ways people cope with loss and having to “let go,” but there are also parallels to society at large; to illustrate, consider how mainstream society tends to marginalize minority groups while simultaneously getting disturbed when minorities are perceived to be isolating themselves.

Review Rating
8.5 out of 10