Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

The Returned: Season Two Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 23, 2019

There are some series that offer such evocative portrayals of wherever they’re set that the mere mention of that show’s name can result in a deluge of sense perceptions related to that location. Probably springing to many minds pretty quickly in that regard would be Twin Peaks, a series whose title obviously refers to its memorable locale. The Returned doesn’t offer that same geographical emphasis in its title, but I’d argue that it manages to create a lot of its spooky mood due to the often long, lingering shots of a supposed isolated French town made even more isolated by a mysterious flood which played into events recounted in The Returned: Season One. And perhaps not completely by coincidence the location of The Returned , with its angular hills populated with evergreens through which mists and low flying clouds waft, is rather reminiscent of Twin Peaks. I in fact repeatedly referenced Twin Peaks in my The Returned: Season One Blu-ray review, and one of the things I wondered about was whether The Returned would be able to sustain its spookiness in its sophomore year, something that even some diehard fans of the David Lynch series may feel stumbled with that show. For reasons I haven’t been able to totally discern, there was a three year interim between the first and second seasons of The Returned and for those who pay attention to Blu-ray release dates, it may be relevant to note that the first season of this show came out some two years after the original French broadcast run occurred, and now this second season appears over five years after the first Blu-ray release, and over four years after the original French broadcast version. That may indicate that the show at the very least has a marketing hurdle to overcome, since the long span of time between the seasons (either broadcast or Blu-ray) may mean memories have faded along with some of the visceral qualities of the show.

As it turns out, the second season of The Returned does in fact manage to sustain its spooky mood, but the series perhaps arguably succumbs to another malady: there's an increasingly soap operatic tone to many of the stories, and especially the increasingly convoluted back stories, of a pretty ungainly aggregation of characters. While the series seems intent on at least attempting focus on a couple of central (central- ish?) characters as the second season gets underway, there are simply so many subplots almost inescapably woven into things that intermittent "data downloads" are almost inevitable as various "minor" characters drift in and out of the tale. In that regard, an emphasis on the pregnancy of Adèle (Clotilde Hesme) offers some, yes, spooky, even nightmarish, scenes which seem intentionally designed to provoke memories of Rosemary's Baby.

But it’s not the “new” births that provide grist for the mystery mill here, but the “rebirths” of the returned, and in that regard, The Returned hedges its bets in an almost willfully discursive fashion, something that may remind some viewers of another show which exploited an exotic location, Lost: The Complete Collection . The Returned keeps darting off into various (often melodramatic) subplots, something that at least keeps the proceedings stuffed to the veritable gills with interrelationships and a lot of paranoia, but which seems designed to keep the series from ever providing any concrete answers as to what’s going on.

That said, there is some information imparted this season that seeks to explicate mysteries surrounding the dam that provides so much visual interest and intrigue in the series, though some of the cult like subtexts of this aspect prove to be pretty overheated. The series also starts to get into more explicit Walking Dead territory, at least by implication, something it had tended to hint at in its first season. There's a weird kind of wrap up here that might be seen as a fittingly obtuse "finale", though there are certainly enough unanswered questions still lingering that a third season of The Returned, should it ever materialize, may be as convoluted as the first two.

The Returned: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Returned: The Complete Second Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. It's been long enough since the first season appeared on Blu-ray that I can't recall whether or not the IMDb had technical data on the shoot back then, but my hunch is it didn't since my review of the first season doesn't include any. There's info on the IMDb now that the series was shot with Arri Alexas and I'm assuming things were finished at a 2K DI. As with the first season, this is a generally sharp and well detailed looking presentation, though as can be gleaned from some of the screenshots I've uploaded to this review, a lot of the show is really aggressively graded, often toward almost cobalt blue tones, something that can tend to keep fine detail levels somewhat masked. The entire series has a somewhat desaturated look, one that emphasizes the kind of Pacific Northwest-esque grays and dirty greens. In close-ups, fine detail is often quite excellent, and there are a few scenes (especially in some later episodes) that may induce a bit of squeamishness in more sensitive viewers. There was some brief almost striated looking horizontal lines running through the FBI warning at disc boot up, but I noticed no actual issues with the presentation of the episodes.

The Returned: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Returned: The Complete Second Season features a nicely evocative DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in the original French. A glut of outdoor material, some in kind of stormy environments, provides good opportunities for well placed ambient environmental effects, and there are a fair number of startle effects that crop up from time to time. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout the season.

The Returned: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Perhaps at least somewhat surprisingly given the show's long absence between seasons, which might suggest the need for a bit of "catch up" featurettes, neither of the two discs in this two disc offer any supplementary material.

The Returned: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I think The Returned largely manages to evade the so-called "sophomore slump" that many series, mysterious or otherwise, seem to encounter, but I also think the series is increasingly prone to dart off into needless melodrama and a ton of back stories that keep the forward momentum kind of iffy at times. The visuals of this series consistently impress, though, and the French locations utilized are often incredibly spooky looking. Those wanting a nonstop array of answers to questions posed in the series' first seasons will probably be fairly frustrated with this second season, and as of the writing of this review, no third season to explain the questions posed by the series' second season has been announced. Technical merits are solid, and with caveats noted, The Returned: The Complete Second Season comes Recommended.