BroadcastChic
Excellent, a Must See
Frances Chung
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Ginger
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
robertemerald
I have seen the original French drama on which this is based. I've also seen the brilliant first season of The Leftovers. I'm a science fiction fan, so such shows are all good news to me and I'm therefore bias. The scope for failure in such shows is all down to the actors, the script and the plot. All three shows succeed brilliantly. It's almost edge-of-your-seat viewing, all have a certain horror, and brought out in me a strange fascination that was a surprise and very enjoyable. There's a depth of thought by the writers that is, from a science fiction point of view, truly brilliant, and certainly original. There are movies that use such themes but have to use a certain quirkiness, or failing that a certain catastrophic horror, that don't succeed as well as this series. It comes across as very honest, very human, a certain unknowable horror, even with those that find themselves alive again, and is thus very watchable. I have to take my hat off to brave television that walks such a tight-rope. I'm docking The Returned two points for not being brave enough to resolve the season sufficiently (for me). I could see a great ending there, but it's stalled, presumably to make way for a second season. From memory the French version had this problem as well.
J. Krekel
Stephen King says he doesn't plot. He just starts out with a situation in mind - one that can usually be described as a 'What If?' situation - and lets the story grow from there. It works for him. This show also had a 'what if' situation in mind: 'What if dead people started returning?' Well. Great. Now you've got a premise. Lets see what happens next, shall we? NOTHING! Nothing happens next! Well, of course some things happen, but it's more of a regular drama now - with love triangles and such - and it has hardy anything to with the premise anymore. I mean, sure, some of the people involved are now 'returned'. That fact registers, but it doesn't affect the drama. (The Australian show 'Glitch', which has the same premise, does this better.) Sure, we get SOME 'hints of development' here and there, creepy kid is indeed creepy and such, but there is no actual progress in the development of the basic premise. If that's point A, we don't get to point B. We find out nothing as to why, how, who, and/or what's next. We're basically stuck watching a regular soap opera.A badly written one at that. If you 'break up a fight' not by pushing or holding people away from each other, but by almost bashing someone's skull in with a heavy and blunt object, the guy whose skull you almost bashed in is obviously going to be a bit grumpy, isn't he? You're going to at least have some words about that. In this show too? Naah. Bash someone's skull in, guy says nothing about it. Doesn't even blame you. After all, you were breaking up a fight weren't you? Therefore you meant well by almost murdering me. Also, apparently you can shoot unarmed people for no reason and still be the good guy. Woman who loved your victim all her life to the point of obsession won't even blink, lie to the cops for you.Both of these scenes are bad enough on their own, what makes them worse is that they are completely out of character. Both of these guys are supposed to be the boring, sensible ones. Were we viewers wrong about them? Were they actually psychos and it's only now revealed? Nope. They go back to being boring and reasonable as if nothing happened. No reveal. Just bad writing. More I think about it, more terrible it was.
xhidden99
I thought 'Slow Burn' was over as a genre, or a joke or troll or whatever show runners did when they didn't have writers or a script. Shows like 'The Killing' blazed a trail of boredom, dullness and inaction. But it was like a shooting star, a blank, void, do nothing black hole of suck we hoped would burn out and die. But 'The Returned', like the back from the deadzoids it protrays Slow Burn is back from the Pet Seminary of bad ideas. There is nothing that happens in this show beyond the premise. You wait and you wait and you wait and....nothing. But it's not as irritating as those earlier shows because all the pretty people don't talk or say much of anything least of all stupid nonsense. Embrace the void.
justchillz
I've never watched the french version as I'm not French nor am I bilingual in French. The reviews from people who are native speakers of French are extremely biased, pointless. Why on earth would a francophone speaker prefer an Americanized-remake of a French show? Why would someone from Japan prefer the English version of "The Grudge." Not everyone is into foreign movies. I find foreign movies extremely boring, unless they are in my native-European language. If you are a native-speaker of that language, you will prefer the original movie or show. It's a statistical norm and given. All these ignorant reviews do is support stereotypes about the French. If you are going to review a show, review it for why it sucks, not "the French one is better" with no explanation to backup that claim.I cannot see the french one being any better than this nonsense I sat through, hoping for some improvement at least the very end. The whole premise of the show is messed up. The part about the towns people coming back from the dead is already far-fetched, in my opinion. When Camille was the only one who came back from the dead, it seemed more interesting. Suddenly, all these people started coming back at random (or had already come back) for no reason it all. Why do only certain people come back? Why did they come back? (The boy was back four years ago, so it cannot be the impending flood.) This issue never gets sorted out in the series. Also, do these people not age after coming back from the dead, since the boy is still the same age. The boy wanted the teacher dead so he caused the bus crash, did he die and come back again, or just not age? The show is not real science-fiction, it's absurd. An entire herd of deer drown for no apparent reason (absurd example 1).Absurd example #2: A cop shoots his girl friend's (fiancé's) unarmed ex fiancé, and she just takes his side and lies to the police about him holding a knife to her. Investigators should have been able to tell from the position of her ex's body that he was unarmed. He didn't have a knife in his hand, and a knife was never shown in the episode. And how on earth could that woman walk down the isle with a man who shot her her daughter's father in cold blood in front of her. He just wanted to hug her. He had no intention of hurting her, which is clear to anyone watching the episode. She knew he loved her, but could care less was pleased the husband knocked him off. I'm certain many viewers were angry with the show after watching this scene unfold the way it had.Example 3: Another far-fetched example is authorities dropping of a six-year old, mute, potentially traumatized/disabled boy at a shelter for homeless adults. Where are the child welfare agencies? Many Eastern European countries may not have the "wonderful" foster care system we have in America today, but they have orphanages. Though I'm not familiar with French French (only Quebecois), I'm doubtful that French authorities would drop of a child at a shelter with homeless adults. The child needed serious help.Far-fetched example 4: Camille loses her virginity and for no apparent reason apart from having sex, the man turns stone-cold dead while she's on top of him. She can make out, but not have sex? What the hell? And why on earth are they so hungry, eating all the time?Every episode is all over the place. They keep switching from one story to the next every 10 minutes. Some of those scenes are so incredibly boring, it's unbearable to watch, you need a fast-forward button.The episodes never end, but just drag on. Even the season finale doesn't have an end to a story that has already dragged over 10 episodes. Does the town go under water or not? This entire season could have been filmed in three to five episodes, in my opinion. There is so much fluff, it's annoying and boring. I watched the whole season in three in a half hours - by episode 4 I began clicking the fast-forward button to only watch the mini plots unfold that were actually interesting. You need a fast-forward button to watch this, the episodes are such a mess! It's like you'd be watching four different television shows at the same time. You want to know what happens with Lena, but you have to sit through the ongoing scene with the dead boy, dead fiancé, dead serial killer, dead institutionalized women w crazed suicidal elderly man (that I fast-forwarded as this part was too boring) and etc. The lesbian kissing and sex scenes were also "too long." I had to fast-forward through them because they wouldn't end. Only about twenty minutes of each episode is interesting, worth-watching. (They fast forward through the investigation of the cop who killed the fiancé's ex, the neighbour who was murdered, but the kissing, boring talks, cat eating human flesh, and sex scenes never seem to end.) Not only are the episodes a total disjointed mess, those mini-stories skip parts and jump in time (24 years ago, 2 years ago, 1 year ago). It's already very unpleasant to be watching four different shows at the same time, but the stories also go back and forth in time.I say watch something else, or be able to fast-forward!
