Matt Armitage
Les Revenants (The Returned)
Do not confuse the French original with the not-terrible but definitely nowhere near as good American version. Les Revenants—itself an adaptation of a 2004 french film of the same name—was released in 2013 and was critically acclaimed by virtually everyone who saw it, which was sadly—outside of France and the UK—not that many. Cast your mind back to a time when Netflix didn’t buy up every half decent foreign show around and force it down our greedy eyeholes. This is a time when subtitles were solely the realm of artsy foreign films and similarly artsy lovers of such things. Regular people didn’t watch things with subtitles. It was in fact the first fully-subtitled drama on Channel 4 for 20 years when it was shown in the UK. In the US it screened on Sundance, so basically those same artsy people who actually seek out subtitles for extra artsiness.
Nonetheless it bagged itself an Emmy for best drama and a Peabody award, and well-deservedly. Coming three years after The Walking Dead premiered, Les Revenants delivered a different kind of living dead. Set in a small french town in the shadows of the Alps, dead townsfolk suddenly start to return to their families, alive, and appear exactly as they were when they died. They claim to have no memory of what happened and obviously their families are overjoyed to see them but are understandably scared, confused, and of course struggle psychologically with the return of those they have mourned for—in some cases for decades.
A haunting score by Mogwai lends an eerie soundscape to the show, and along with the mystery of the returned, there is a fresh spate of killings which have the hallmarks of a past serial killer, and the reservoir is mysteriously draining, revealing unnerving secrets of the past. Is there a connection between all these events? Are the returned as innocent as they seem? The show reels you in slowly, mostly with mood and tension rather than shock tactics and flashy effects.
The horror in Les Revenants is more akin to Flanagan’s investigations into grief, especially that of his first film Absentia, but it also has a haunting ethereal quality that makes watching it like living in a dream. This is a show that absolutely deserves to be left spoiler-free for those that haven’t seen it. As of writing both seasons are available on Amazon Prime in the US.
