Imagine the scene: A talented young filmmaker takes the podium at a news conference and explains that, despite the tidal wave of acclaim, his new movie has been misinterpreted from the get-go.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you fail to see,\u201d he says, \u201cis that my film, which appears to be about an actual, real-life social problem, is really a complex metaphor for zombies.\u201d And the crowd goes wild.<\/p>\n
It has become both an artistic and a critical clich\u00e9 to discuss zombie movies in terms of what they really \u201cmean\u201d and, 45 years after Night of the Living Dead, a worldwide roll call of auteurs, hucksters and hacks have tried their hand at using the trope of shambling, undead hordes to jab at hot-button issues.<\/p>\n
The Canadian-Spanish co-production The Returned doesn\u2019t bring much new to the party, except maybe restraint. For all its determined rib-nudging about prejudice, the medical-industrial complex, and the haves and have-nots, it never quite clarifies exactly what its poor, frothing monsters are supposed to represent.<\/p>\n
Kate (Emily Hampshire) is a doctor at a big-city hospital who works with patients who have been classified as \u201creturned\u201d \u2013 the victims of a zombie epidemic several decades old and currently in a tentative state of containment. By injecting a special antidote at regular intervals, \u201creturned\u201d people can lead regular lives, but there is a stigma attached: A scene where Kate\u2019s secretly afflicted partner Alex (Kris Holden-Ried) warily \u201ccomes out\u201d to another couple over dinner is squirm-inducing in ways that go beyond brain-eating gore.<\/p>\n
The Returned can\u2019t transcend its packaging as a genre piece: It swaps out an entire set of horror-movie manoeuvres for trite, TV-style thriller tricks. Hampshire and Holden-Ried are excellent as the lovers coping with a unique stumbling block to their relationship; yet, when they learn that the antidote will soon be in short supply, the film becomes less affecting. The plot twist transforms the rich, multidimensional characters into anxious props in a ticking-time-bomb scenario.<\/p>\n
Director Manual Carballo, whose 2010 feature Exorcismus was seen as a straightforward flip through the possessed-child playbook, keeps things moving briskly, and cinematographer Javier Salmones bathes everything in shades of night (the entire film has a doleful, greyish tinge). The quiet elegance of the film\u2019s craftsmanship is a point in its favour, but it\u2019s a bit self-defeating given that the basic appeal of this material is visceral. A key sequence where a man methodically chains himself to a wall in anticipation of a brutal transformation is telling: This is a serious, austere film that feels as if it\u2019s barely restraining the B-movie within. In the end, it fights itself to a draw.