Writer(s): Campillo & Brigitte Tijou
Starring: Géraldine Pailhas, Jonathan Zaccaï, and Frédéric Pierrot
If you’re thinking about heading into a viewing of They Came
Back based on the quotes on the outside of the box, then just save yourself the
time and don’t bother watching it. In
fact, if you’re planning a viewing of it as a horror fan, just stay far, far
away. The packaging is misleading, with
the studio clearly latching on excitedly to any mention of the word “zombie” in
any review for this film, in a desperate attempt to cash in on the current
trend.
But those are just the sign of the times. Zombie movies, once my favorite of all horror
subgenres, have become so corporatized and overplayed that I can’t even enjoy
them anymore. Once the walking dead
trend caught on so badly that they started being bastardized in mainstream
media, being used to sell everything from cars to chain restaurant junk food, I
just tuned them out. I can’t even watch
a show like “The Walking Dead”, simply because I’m completely sick of them and
all that they have come to represent (though this hasn’t ruined my love of
older zombie movies).
This is precisely why I wanted to see They Came Back from
the moment I heard about it—it takes the basic principles of a “walking dead”
movie, and has the balls to eliminate almost all of the horror elements,
instead presenting it as a drama. That
isn’t to say that They Came Back can’t appeal to the horror crowd—there are
many haunting scenes, and a palpable sense of dread throughout a majority of its
existence—but in order to truly appreciate it, it requires one to go in with an
open mind, and quite a bit of patience.
Interestingly, the movie wastes absolutely no time in
setting up its story: the opening scene depicts hundreds of normal-looking
people walking out of a cemetery. The
corpses in They Came Back aren’t driven by an insatiable hunger for brains, but
rather a need to incorporate themselves back into a society that has erased
almost all memories of their existence—the jobs and relationships that they
left behind have long been filled, and loved ones have finally moved on from mourning their loved ones. But how is one supposed to react when they find that their loved one isn't dead after all?
Wisely, the reasons why they come back are never explained,
or really even explored. Why they have returned doesn’t matter, especially when there are plenty of other aspects to
explore. Instead, of the thousands of
returnees (we do learn that a majority of the returnees are old, and all of
them have died within the past ten years), we focus on three: Mathieu, who
returns to his widowed wife Rachel; six-year-old Sylvain, who returns to his
parents, Isham and Veronique; and elderly Martha returns to her husband, who is
the mayor of the unnamed city in which all of these events unfold.
It slowly becomes evident that something isn’t right with
the dead, as by nightfall, their calm demeanors change: Martha keeps trying to climb
the fence behind her home, forcing the mayor to lock her in the bedroom with
him; Sylvain spends hours knocking on the wall, as if trying to catch the
attention of someone; and Mathieu sneaks off at night, to partake in mysterious
meetings with several other members of the newly-resurrected living. What could be the cause of their bizarre
behavior?
When all is said and done They Came Back is a fascinating
failure; it never commits to one single angle of the whole situation, instead
biting off little pieces of several different ideas until none of them are ever
given a chance to fully develop. Is it a
film about the nature of grief? Maybe
for a couple minutes, until it loses interest in that and moves on to the next
idea. What about a meditation on the
nature of loss, and what the dead leave behind?
An interesting parable on mental illness (not surprisingly, the
returnees are described as being much slower, both mentally, and physically)? It’s all of these things, and none.
This becomes the movie’s biggest problem: It doesn’t seem
interested in answering the questions that it poses. It doesn’t even feel the need to end the
movie on any kind of usable note, instead opting for a finish so ambiguous,
that I wasn’t even clear on what the possibilities were. This is a shame, because through all of its
hits and misses, it held my attention—I was legitimately unclear on where it
was headed, and was completely enthralled in all the potential outcomes.
The terrible ending didn’t sour me on the rest of the movie,
however, and I’m still recommending it to those that think they might like it. The truth is, the story is quietly haunting;
there are no jump scares, nor is there even a drop of blood, yet the way
Campillo still manages to create an unnerving tension, while still balancing it
out with scenes of genuine poignancy and sadness, is pretty impressive in and
of itself. Not all of it works, and it
does ramble on for a little longer than it needs to, but when it does work, They
Came Back is a refreshing, melodramatic take on the “dead returning” theme that
fascinates even as it slowly loses steam.
RECAP: Ignore the packaging, and any review you’ve ever read
about this, because contrary to what the studio will have you believe, this is
not a “thinking man’s zombie movie”, or anything of the sort. Sure, the dead have returned to life, but
these are simply people that want to return to the way things were before they
died, leading to scenes of surprisingly effective emotional resonance. Unfortunately, some of its forward progress
is derailed by a director that seems to be so overwhelmed with the
possibilities of the material that he jumps from one theme to another, barely
scratching the surface while never digging deep enough to provide us with
anything meaningful. Even despite this,
and a terrible ending, They Came Back is an interesting semi-failure that those with
an affinity toward slower-moving horror movies or dramas should find
intriguing.
RATING: 6.5/10
TRAILER
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