The Returned (2013) is an ambitious zombie flick that deals with the horrors of desperate humans motivated by love. The Returned (2013) is like a tragic Gift of the Magi meets Daybreakers. The Returned (2013) is set in a world where the zombie virus is not a death sentence if you take a drug every day to retain your identity and not devolve into a mindless monster. The government monitors the infected to prevent another outbreak. There are fears that there will be a shortage of the medicine. Terrorists want to eliminate all of the infected. Coming out as infected is a risky thing to do. Being a zombie is a metaphor for HIV in the 1980s, but is also a suitable plot device to project whatever prejudice the audience is currently experiencing such as xenophobia.
Unfortunately The Returned (2013) devolves into a murder mystery thriller about betrayal and falls in love with the wartime like crazed panic over shortage of supplies. Characters do stupid things like scream into their cell phones that they have fifty doses in a lonely parking garage. I need filmmakers to have characters lock the car doors or keep the windows up when they get in. Also one of the actors gave a weird sexual harassment vibe instead of an avuncular/mentoring vibe, but The Returned (2013) next explores it. Did it end up on the cutting room floor or is the actor weird?
The Returned (2013) abandons the political for the confrontation of morality versus reality of what someone will do to help a loved one survive, but cheapens it with a murder a minute with little to no consequences as it nears the end. Instead of bemoaning man’s inhumanity to man, The Returned (2013) will make you think that if the characters were less involved in shady crap, everything would have been just fine. The Returned (2013) is an ambitious stab at an intellectual zombie flick that ultimately goes for cheap thrills. Only check out The Returned (2013) if you must see every zombie film.