Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘The Returned’

Written by Scott Edwards 

Doing anything to protect your loved ones is something that we all try to do. Hating to see any harm come to our family or friends may cause us more pain to witness than what is actually happening to them. It is necessary to have a strong relationship when these situations arise, and although it could cause us more pain, it is worth us being there to help and give support to our loved ones.

It has been ten years since the first zombie outbreak and now there is a new ‘cure’ on the streets that can keep people from becoming the feared flesh eaters. The Returned Compound is something that has changed life as we know it and if administered within thirty-six hours of being infected, it can keep your loved ones, your loved ones. Although there is one side effect, the infected must take one dose of this cure a day to avoid changing, and if they miss one, well, they turn into the undead.

Not everyone is happy with this course of action and would rather the infected become zombies, but Kate who works in The Returned unit at the ER sees it differently. Six years ago, she met her infected husband in the ER, and now the two have the strongest relationship. Reports are coming out however that the cure may be hitting roadblocks in the production field since it comes strictly from the spinal fluid of the undead. With the cure stopping people from turning into these creatures, there is no way to harvest the fluid needed and it is causing unrest within all of the cities around the world.

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The only way to keep the alive/undead alive is to get funding for a synthetic serum that can provide the proteins to keep the zombie virus at bay and Kate is laying it all on the line for her ER unit, and more importantly, her husband. Meeting resistance at every turn she has to stick to her course as she has not been told that the production of the drug will be stopped. When a group of radicals come into the hospital and kill her patients, she understands the concerns of the outside world and when she hears that none of the hospitals have received their weekly shipment of the Returned Compound, she starts to worry. One day without the proper dosage and the city could be run over by the undead once again, and that would also mean the end of the life she has grown accustomed to for the past six years.

The Returned is the story about a world that has been saved from a zombie virus, momentarily. With a new serum that can provide the infected with the proteins to keep the virus at bay, the threat of an apocalypse has been put to sleep. But when there is no way to further harvest this magical cure, the infected, doctors and normal population start to riot and anyone that is infected or helps them are targets of radicals that only want to ensure a life for themselves free of zombies. When this problem hits home for Kate and her Returned husband, she is forced to face these people head on and prove that although the infected could become the undead, they are still human for now and should not be punished for it. All of her efforts are directed into finding an alternate way to produce the proteins needed to keep the zombie virus at bay and a synthetic serum could hit the market, but it might not come soon enough as the world has been cut off and the cure cannot be reproduced. 

A powerful look at where the world could be going if we are ever faced with such a pandemic. Finding a cure for the common cold seems to be easy these days, but it would take time to find a cure for the common undead. The thing that I enjoyed most about this movie is the lack of looking forward. Since the only way to get the proteins to keep people from changing into the flesh-eating monsters is to take it from the undead, when there are no more undead to harvest from, what do you do when the cure diminishes? A scary thought and it makes you have to stop and think, should we be fighting against nature, as since she has run the earth for so many more years than we have inhabited it. Does she know better than us? Or are we so hard headed to think we can outsmart what has been happening for millions of years. Stay Scared.

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