Summary
Things start off really well with an extraneously poignant shot of a statue followed by a goofy poetic voiceover (which is unfortunately somewhat difficult to understand due to the sepulchral voice of the narrator) about the dead and destiny and the full moon. Essentially it's lyrical nonsense, so, of course, I loved it. This segued into a second voiceover, this one about DNA mutation, blood cell incubation, nuclear testing . . . all the usual suspects when it comes to the walking undead. There was also something about Sgt. Enrique Hernandez, the gentleman doing this second voiceover, wanting to die for something he believes in. This related in some fashion to the death of his father, Lt. Raphael Hernandez, who was played by the same actor playing Enrique, thereby reinforcing the bizarre, yet nearly universal, movie convention which states that people whose lives are profoundly affected by the life of an ancestor must be physically identical to that ancestor. Of course, in this case, the decision to use a single actor may not have been a deliberate choice, but rather a result of an absence of funds with which to hire another actor. As Enrique's indistinct desire to avenge his father's death is never referred to again, the fact that I didn't understand it at all turned out to be irrelevant.
Once the meat of the movie gets underway, it's told in flashback by Phil, the sole survivor of the zombie infestation, as he is interrogated by a distinctly hostile federal agent. The scenes he describes consist largely of people running in and out of a building, sometimes pursued by zombies, sometimes just randomly freaking out. As Phil himself is not present during all of the scenes, I am forced to wonder how he could possibly be describing them.
The zombies look pretty good, especially given the exceptionally low budget on which this movie was made, but the plot is so disjointed as to be incomprehensible. For instance, when we meet Phil's girlfriend, Danielle, she is just getting out of bed, clad in pink pajamas - pants and a shirt. She almost immediately runs out of her house, without changing clothes, without, in fact, even bothering to check on her little brother, who is forced to run after her. The next time we see Danielle, she is wearing green pajama pants and a black tank top and another girl, Jamie, has appeared, wearing a pink sundress. As Jamie's presence is never explained, I was for a while tempted to think that both girls were Danielle, who had somehow split herself in two, leaving one girl wearing an outfit the color of Danielle's initial outfit, and the other girl wearing an outfit with the approximate configuration of Danielle's initial outfit. To the director's credit, though, I will say that some of the visuals were really quite brilliant. One shot of Sgt. Hernandez, his cheek and shoulder caressed by shafts of sunlight, was downright elegant.
The movie concludes with a return to the cadaverous voice that introduced us to the film, informing us that "this is a story that never was." Considering that the events of the previous 22 minutes certainly cannot be considered to constitute a coherent story of any kind, I am forced to agree with the ghoulish narrator.
If you'd like to see The Day They Came Back for yourself, it's available for viewing online, which I think is a wonderful thing.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
In the process of watching this, I realized why so many of the great zombie movies center around people trapped in a fixed location. If the action isn't anchored anywhere, it is very likely to deteriorate into people running back and forth in no coherent fashion, trying to avoid zombies which seem to materialize out of nowhere and vanish into thin air, which is exactly what happens in this movie. At one point Phil and Jack head off in different directions just long enough to get their respective girlfriends killed and then reunite back at the building. I almost expected them to congratulate each other on their newly-acquired freedom, until Jack got himself killed holding a rope for Phil to climb down a drop that couldn't have been more than fifteen feet. I'm not saying that's a comfortable jump to make, but I think given the proximity of a horde of animate corpses, the two of them would have been better off attempting the jump together.
Also, I have to agree with something Barbara May pointed out in her rant about Glenville 3 - it would be nice if these ultra-low budget (with a budget of only $3,000, The Day They Came Back has just edged out Glenville 3 as the lowest-budget film yet reviewed on this site) movies took advantage of the complete freedom that comes from not being beholden to investors and did something really daring and original. The end of The Day They Came Back, when the federal agent (the credits refer to him as a detective, but I prefer to think that he works for a covert government agency) shoots Phil in cold blood has a nice evil empire feel to it, but no more so than any given episode of The X Files. Other than that, it's basically just like every other zombie movie, except that, at only 22 minutes, the zombies seem to have eaten major chunks of the plot.
Maybe it's unfair of me to ask so much of these independent movies. For instance, when you consider that Resident Evil: Apocalypse earned the same rating as this movie, even though the budget for Resident Evil: Apocalypse was more than fourteen thousand times that of The Day They Came Back, this movie starts to look pretty darned impressive. Or Resident Evil: Apocalypse starts to look pretty darned appalling. Probably both - it's admirable that Scott Goldberg managed to make any movie at all for three grand and its ridiculous that the makers of Resident Evil: Apocalypse managed to blow forty-three million. But I still prefer it when I can match my admiration for an independent filmmaker's spunk and tenacity with an equivalent admiration for the quality of the finished product.
BARBARA JO
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