The Returned

In the future after a zombie outbreak, there was a synthetic compound developed to keep those with the infection from turning into the viral flesheating human monsters that result from the plague. But it is later determined that the current injection doses (to be administered daily or else) is running out and so desperation sets in as people will do anything to attain or confiscate vials needed to keep the infection from manifesting. A nurse named Kate (Emily Hampshire) understands this terrible reality and will do what she can to help her beau, Alex (Kris-Holden Ried, of Lost Girl) escape from a terrible fate awaiting him (a supply to keep him from turning or a safe location until she might can get him doses elsewhere once a close party he trusts steals his doses). But there’s another synthetic protein possibly on the horizon, and Kate is involved in its potential success…or failure. Of course when taxed with the possibility of losing yourself (or have someone you love dearly a potential victim of the zombie plague), betrayal and using violence to survive both contribute to a dilemma Alex and Kate are ill-prepared for. Sometimes those you trust almost implicitly will seem totally reliable and helpful, well-meaning and cherubic only to stab you in the back and take a coveted supply not belonging to them. When doses are scant, and the wait for a possible new synthetic protein might be a bit too late for some, people are sometimes willing to steal and knowingly allow innocents to die to rescue their own.

 

 

This isn’t a zombie film in terms the diehard fan typically expects where emphasis is on the threat of a turn instead of focusing on attempting to survive an outbreak as it surges. For a while, this film had me. But plotting for pure melodramatic purposes left me a bit miffed. I found it implausible that Kate would lose a case of doses in that park garage; and the way doses are treated so openly, I would imagine everyone would guard them with kid gloves, in a locked secret area. The nonchalant nature for which Kate acts with her doses kind of infuriated me. Why would she roll down the window, or, better yet, why wouldn’t she put the case in her trunk? Oh, and how she hits the guy who steals the case, and how the camera captures it just plop open with all of the vials shattering on impact…it is melodramatic bait that had me rolling my eyes. The movie is like The Walking Dead in that it does lay it on thick. This movie goes out of its way to force you to mourn uncontrollably for Alex when he decides to conceal himself with collar and chains while Kate tries to comfort herself and him while the turning begins. At the beginning of the film, Kate is in front of hospital bureaucrats and we get a history lesson on the outbreak, lives lost, the fortunate “turned” who were aided by the synthetic protein (“return protein”) a few hours after contracting the infection, and the need for funding of research. Debates also mention that the protein exists because it is extracted from those who died from the infection, and as resources dwindle, the reality that the current product will be maintained is a reminder to the paranoid and aware that the outbreak of zombies could once again emerge. So this is more of an “epidemic” film (think Contagion except you turn zombie instead of flu-like sick) than a zombie film. The fear of another outbreak has the overly concerned picketing the hospital Kate works, and those “returned” face harsh scrutiny and prejudice. The film has a lot going for it. Some meat on the bone; it does sacrifice gory thrills for drama, so I can only imagine zombie fans needing their ripped throats, disembowelment, and brains exploding from the back of heads after a shot to the foreheads will perhaps grimace. I just wouldn’t recognize this as a zombie film anyway. Again, I consider this a film about an epidemic that is controlled at the time it starts with the knowledge that as supplies dissipate, a growing concern is there, as is contempt and outrage at the threats of one possible missed injection or infected walking among them, considered a “ticking timebomb.” The ending might be considered unsatisfying to viewers expecting retribution for a particular theft that costs Alex dearly, but whatever Kate's plans are (and there's more than enough evidence to consider she's got some vigilante justice on the mind for two individuals that wronged her and Alex), we don't see them come to fruition.

 

However, that opening credits sequence (shot in a type of sepia-toned palate, with a rough 8 millimeter film stock look, and the lines and faded colors that send off this degraded age and gives the zombie outbreak of its time the perfect horrorshow aesthetic) is a real grabber. I would love to see someone shoot a whole zombie film in this degraded film stock, except with sound (or maybe as a silent film with titles just for the hell of it). That’s a topic for a different film that The Returned just isn’t.