The Revenant   Starring: David Anders, Chris Wylde, Louise Griffiths and Jacy King Universal Pictures (UK) RRP: £12.99 8286941 Certificate: 15 Available 02 April 2012

A soldier serving in Iraq is driving an armoured vehicle at night when he accidentally knocks down a small child. Suspecting an ambush, his colleagues instruct him to keep going. However, he stops the vehicle, and when he gets out he is attacked by something that isn’t an enemy soldier. His body is returned to America and, a few days after the funeral, he wakes up in his coffin looking a little decomposed, and with creepy cloudy eyes. He calls on his drop-out drug-taking friend, who is initially freaked-out but later tries to help him. His friend tells him he is a revenant, a sort of vampire, who must drink human blood to prevent his decomposition. So, keeping the secret from the undead man’s fiance, they go out looking for victims of crime, saving the victims and taking the blood of the perpetrators. But when a situation goes seriously wrong the only way to save his friend is to give him his tainted blood. Events get way out of control when the pair fall out and the fiance learns the truth...

This is promoted as a humorous zombie film, which is sort of true but gets nowhere near explaining the tone of the movie. The humour emerges through the increasing ridiculousness of what occurs. The protagonists seem to be half zombie, and half vampire but, aside from the blood sucking, appear to adopt more characteristics from the former.

This movie portrays what would likely happen in reality if a friend or relative did return from the dead. It’s given added impact by the fact the revenant speaks and thinks normally, but acts a little odd. I can’t actually recall any film which investigates this scenario without totally sending it up, and that is amazing considering the number of zombie films which have emerged, staggering, from the earth. The closest is probably Flick, wherein a young man killed in the 1950s returns to take up his life in the present day. At one point in the film the two men become anti-heroes, gunning down villains in a couple of scenes which wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarantino film.

I found myself almost constantly changing my opinion as I watched it for review. There are cliched parts, refreshing hints of originality, and an ending that simply fizzles out. There’s little else to say, apart from that it attempts to do something a little different with the sub-genre. It just doesn’t come across as anything new.

6

Ty Power