They Came Back by Robin Campillo (Les Revenants, France, 2004, 102 min.). The dead have returned…and are undergoing an existential crisis. Robin Campillo’s hugely original drama takes a timeless horror-movie trope, empties it of the expected chills, and uses it as a vehicle for another kind of unease entirely, one rooted in the everyday and in real human emotion. The film begins with an image that could be straight from any George Romero movie, as armies of the reanimated walk out of a graveyard in broad daylight. Everyone who’s died in the last 10 years has mysteriously returned to life, and in one French town, 13,000 people are back on the scene. An audacious genre reworking, They Came Back is philosophically rich and intensely, though subtly, moving. It’s a striking first feature by the co-writer and editor of Laurent Cantet’s films, including Heading South. Description adapted from the London Film Festival.