They Returned (2015)

the audience applauded

Sadly Over-hyped

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I'm not entirely sure what writer and director (and composer, and producer and cinematographer) Iván Noel exactly wanted to achieve here, but me thinks that he really wanted to make a documentary about the Argentinian fauna & flora or something… "The Returned" exists for approximately 70% - and I'm honestly not exaggerating – of environmental footage. Beautiful footage, admittedly, like the process of xenogamy or the moving of river tides in fast-forward, but footage that is completely irrelevant and even misplaced regarding the harrowing plot synopsis about the mysterious return of three young children after they went missing for a short period. This footage is also always accompanied by stern and penetrating piano music that is far more omnipresent and obtrusive than should ever be the case. Iván Noel actually betrayed himself at the Festival of Fantastic Films in Brussels, where he came to introduce his movie, as he openly stated that he adores composing but that he never finds the right images to go with his music, and thus he almost single-handedly made "The Returned" to make the images match with the music. Fair enough, but that's almost like publicly admitting that the film's subject matter wasn't all that important to him. And it shows… I like piano music and nature footage as much as everyone else, but I'm primarily a film-fanatic (especially when I visit a dedicated festival) and from this point of view "The Returned" is a failure and a big, fat disappointment. The mystery around the vanished trio of children unfolds intolerably slow, the script is full of loose ends and clues that eventually lead nowhere and many things remain unexplained after the climax. The script is full of potentially great ideas, though, but none of them are properly elaborated. The story takes place in a little Northern Argentinian town, where the local kids play at an abandoned hospital built by Nazis that fled right after WWII but wanted to continue Mengele's experiments there. The powerful history and eeriness of this building isn't properly put to use. The little town is also full of corrupt prominent citizens, like the mayor who used government funds to renovate his own mansion or the female judge who deliberately convicted innocent people for crimes committed by others, but also their stories are mere footnotes in the script. The mysteriously returned (and suddenly semi-autistic) children also strangely affect the rest of their class, but we never find out how or why. One little boy all of a sudden becomes a clairvoyant, for example, but he never went missing. And finally, there's the uncanny immigrant school teacher who behaves strangely and preaches supernaturally, but his sub plot also dies rather abruptly. All this to say that "The Returned" definitely contains a handful of compelling moments and suspenseful aspects, but – honestly - the film delivers absolutely nothing. There will probably be a lot of self-acclaimed intellectuals and artistic independent film freaks who claim that this is a true masterpiece with deep underlying messages and social/political statements, but the truth remains that it's a dull and passable film.

From the opening titles to the last scene, this film exudes tension, beauty and the uncanny feeling of rotting scents. It is cryptic in its tone and the imagery definitely underlines it.Set in the second decade of the 21st Century, the film revs up from a fantastic high speed collage of our planet and beyond, from the stars to the life of cells, to an unnerving black and white flashback of atrocities during WW2. Carefully crafted, the Director brings us back to reality by the hands of three children. They are the cryptic centre of the film. They seem to be back in town from a gruesome recent past which we don't understand. Just a wee bit of insight into the life of Lucio's family, brings to the audience snippets of the reasons why the kids are so weird. They don't talk at all and it seems their muteness is affecting the other children in town.Strange things happen. People know the three children have been abducted and sexually mutilated, and they make their own assumptions while some of them die terrible and inexplicable deaths one after the other. A drawing of a second grader adds to the mystery, depicting one of those deaths before they happened. Police, inspectors, a judge, the school principal, a psychologist, parents, even the priest from the parish, all play a part in the unravelling of a crazed community that turns against itself, inflicting division, fear and pain. Judgemental and brutal, they are decided to eliminate whoever committed the atrocities they believe in. They have such a strong belief, they decide to make "the list" of all the possible molesters in town, even when they know there are none. They create their own world of suspicion and hatred that will eventually destroy them.But, unbeknown to them, the children have a common goal and they are relentless in achieving it. As evil prevails everywhere, gossip and a deep distrust make life unbearable in town. The omens coming from the only sane person -a teacher, are regarded as the source of the evil that keeps spreading. The kids are committed because they lost everything before but their souls.Only after everything is said and almost done, we get to understand their true reality. What happened to them. Why they returned.This film is inspired by the West Memphis Three case, but goes beyond what we know. It delves into the complicated political issues around finger pointing, lying, preposterous judgment, crowd mentality and irresponsible assumptions. It's a fantastic journey, paced at the necessary speed to understand the complexity of human behaviour. Crafted with beautiful cinematography and scored with subtle and delicate musical passages, Ellos Volvieron is a mind bender.

This is the sixth movie by fearless director Ivan Noel, and the most extreme. In each of his movies, Ivan explores deeply adult themes from a child's perspective. In En Tu Ausencia, he examined the idea of emotional need, set against the background of a boy's burgeoning sexuality. In Vuelve, he considered the idea of unhealthy emotional co-dependency between mother and son, and of stifling jealousy. In this movie, he explores the way that sins of the past can ripple down to the present.I really wanted to like this movie more than I did, but I felt it was laboured, tried faaar too hard to be meaningful, and went out of its way to clutter the terrain with pointless red herrings.It had all of the usual Ivan Noel trademarks: mesmerizingly beautiful children, ethereally beautiful landscapes, and a stunningly haunting sound track. These are all good things, yet somehow, they just didn't come together in Noel's usually effortless manner. It almost felt, just on occasion, as though he was going through the motions, and ticking the boxes - falling back upon previously successful techniques, but without the heart that made them work before. It feels to me that Noel's cynicism about his lack of financial recognition from his so-called fans, has infected this movie. My advice to him, would be to create for the pleasure of creating because true genius frequently goes unrewarded. It's a sad truth.The movie has the very darkest of themes: the abduction and sexual mutilation of children. It was apparently inspired very loosely by the true story of the Robin Hood Hills murders, in which three 8 year old West Memphis boys were sexually mutilated and murdered. If that IS the case, then the description I just gave is the sum total of the inspiration.This story gets badly lost in supernaturalism, allusions to Nazis and Mengele experimentation, and more, all in an effort to misdirect you away from the real criminal. It can't decide if it wants to be a horror, a mystery, a psycho-drama, or something else entirely. There are elements of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, Dracula, The Walking Dead, Village of the Damned, and other movies all strongly present, yet sadly, these feel as if they are jumbled together in (to quote Star Trek's Commander Data) "a haphazard melange" that is LESS than the sum of its parts. It feels as though Noel has tried to include TOO many elements.One of the talents that make Noel's earlier works so mesmerizing is his leisurely pacing. His movies feel akin to being on a slow moving stream on an Autumn day. There are hints of danger, but these are no frantic rapids, hurtling you towards a predictable conclusion, it's a turgid, piranha-infested river with far more beneath the deceptively calm surface. Noel's confidence in this area is perhaps the greatest sign of his mastery of the art of film-making.With Ellos Volvieron, the back story was told in a series of cut-aways, but all too often, so was the fore story. This gave the impression of a story stuttering spasmodically and disjointedly to a punchline that was far less gratifying (and made far less sense) than his previous movies. There were some interesting devices used, such as Noel's beautiful and languid music, juxtaposed against frantic, speeded up activity. This created an interesting tension – like watching slow motion clouds to a manic dub-step beat.Ultimately, Noel tried too hard to imbue EVERY SINGLE SECOND with deep portent or meaning, but simply created a movie that felt like a Wagner opera – overly melodramatic, needlessly surreal, and ultimately unsatisfying.For all of that, I was glad that I watched the movie, and it's definitely worth the modest $10 asking price. This is a director who deserves your support, but I hope that in his effort to do the things he does best, his work does not continue to focus on the melodrama, rather than the subtlety.Even a bad Ivan Noel movie is better than 95% of the best that Hollywood has to offer.