One morning, 10 years worth of the dead emerge from the cemetery of a Canadian town. They are not zombies with rotting flesh and murderous intentions, but look much like they did before they died, except maybe a little blank, dazed, enigmatic. Nonetheless, they are - inexplicably - alive again. The authorities round them up and set up temporary quarters on the outskirts of the town, a refugee camp if you will. Scientists observe them and try to figure out what happened, and what to do.The dead are carefully studied. A significant percentage are, of course, elderly. They all seem to have experienced memory loss. They appear healthy, though their body temperature is 5 degrees lower than normal. The bewildered townspeople are told that they can visit their loved ones, but are not forced to take them back: it is understood that an enormous personal and emotional adjustment will have to be made, and that in some cases it may be impossible.Slowly, the dead return into the community. Some are given their former jobs back. We are presented with three stories. A wealthy elderly man whose wife has returned. A young woman, whose husband died in a car accident and is now returned. A middle aged couple, whose child has returned. We follow the range of emotions: confusion, joy, fear, anxiety, ambivalence. We watch as the dead slowly attempt to adapt to living once again, as if coming out of a coma.But the dead are up to something. At night, they wander into the streets, to congregate in secret.Les Revenants is a strange and chilling film, not a horror story in the usual, but in a more psychological sense. In many ways it is a realistic examination of what might happen if such an extraordinary event were actually to occur. But there is an eerie, feverish dream-quality to it, a sense of dread, imbalance, of menace.

If you went into They Came Back with ideas of zombies eating brains, apocalyptic cities in ruin, or gore/violence, you picked the wrong movie. Though you could rightly say this is a zombie movie, it would have to be stressed these zombies are not like traditional ones. I don't want to give anything away, and I'll try not to spoil this, but I will say this movie goes more into the emotional aspect of the "what if" scenario the dead do come back to life. Not the shuffling type, but exactly the same way they were before they passed away. Several family units are explored, and their attempt to reintegrate their loved one back into the land of the living, and this allows the director to shed more light on the message he appears to be sending. Of which, I am not sure. At first I thought end-of-days thoughts, such as a pseudo-biblical theme, and to be honest he may very well be going for that. However, the ending doesn't seem to make that scenario valid, so I'm still open as to this movies meaning. All in all, it was enjoyable.

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.

After I realized this movie is not a horror or a trash one, just because it has zombies in its plot I thought it has a great creative mind behind the story; however, when the movie ended I felt there was something missing in the story. The movie does not care much about explaining its core issue that is about the coming of the dead people themselves. Why did they return to live if all they want is to go to the tunnels? It does not say where the tunnels will lead them. To heaven or to hell? to the Elygian fields? to Mars? or to some new dimension? I would not bother if the movie was longer just to explain this part carefully. If so,the movie would be brilliant. Unfortunately it is not a brilliant movie. It is only good to make us think about the crazy hypothesis that the movie is talking about, which is, at least, interesting. My note is to say that according to my own interpretations, the movie never tries to sound funny as some other critics say, but tragic and hypothetical. People are never prepared to welcome their dead relatives with eager if they knock at their door after some years of "absence", even if you love them so much.