Revival~When the Dead Return and the Living Fear What Follows

Okay I was in a gathering, when I heard some group of friends discussing something. Anyways I was actually Eva's dropping on their discussion. How can I not? When what they were talking about sounded so interesting. They were talking about a movie but the way it was discussed felt so interesting. I was so curious I kinda asked one of them the name of the movie, she said Revival and that it's about zombies.

Uh oh! I quickly lost interest 🤷🏼, I was like I'm not in for any zombies movies. She called me back and said “Revival isn't your average zombie movie, it’s chilling because these people act like nothing happened.”

I paused….

Thank you I said and went back home.

Around 3pm that afternoon, I was done with everything I wanted to do and I thought to myself, let's watch some movies.

It was as though my mind was waiting to remind me of my discussion with the lady that morning.

I searched up “Revival” and the rest follows……

The drama starts in the quiet town of Wausau, Wisconsin with cold streets and a routine life. And then there is Revival Day: dozens of dead bodies come out of graves, they are as good as new, and... dead. No zombification, no insatiable hunger--just humans returned, disoriented, untransformed.

Dana is a hard-boiled and complex cop when out of the blue, she is assigned to solve a murder case, yet the murderer is... a person who should be dead. The boundaries between normal and supernatural are bridged as her sister Em comes back. All of them, dead or alive are harboring secrets and Dana soon discovers that her case is personal to her more than any other case she has had before.

It is horror, mystery, theological thriller, as well as family drama all combined in a very tastefully disturbing bundle.

Revival engulfed me right at the first episode.

Atmosphere: It is cool and quiet- as the calm before a storm. Cinematography shows that weird silence. The scenes are intimate: air breathing, frost on the grass, blank looks of survivors.

Mystery: Each answer raises a hundred questions. Why are they returning? What are they today? Em, the sister of Dana, appears to be the same but emotions fluctuate, thoughts fade, and stress brews.

Emotion: Dana is hard as nails but she is a mother and sister-woman who is on the wrong path. Melanie Scrofano plays the role with furious energy that reveals worry, confusion, loyalty, all behind a hardened shell. In one scene when she and Em have a moment of silence my chest was tight.

Scrofano is down-to-earth in her performance and the emotional rewards of the series packs a punch.

The scenes are filled with Mystery with Depth
Who killed Em originally? Why are the revived waking? Are they the same people? These questions aren’t tossed aside—they build, stay, and keep you guessing.

As I was watching the episode when Dana and Em finally meet again, I could not help but think about what we leave behind. That online existence, those stolen minutes, those people we lose, would we want them back except that they no longer knew us?

It was the emotional pour-over of identity, of memory out of place and faces once familiar as strangers, it resonated to a level deeper than any chase scene.

It has got critics on high: the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes stands at 93 percent with raves such as it being a crackerjack concept… eerily entertaining with Melanie Scrofano in a captivating performance.

PopHorror hailed it as a new supernatural thriller as good as any in years, citing its small-town atmosphere of tension and character relationships and economy, which it said was not a zombie-fest.

The consensus? Revival appears to be a serious horror show with actual emotional depth and authenticity.

Revival is not all a horror show. It is a supernatural twist on a family drama that has a philosophical puzzle in it.

See it in case you need tension that builds on words and glances and hush--the tension that does not add up to alien invasions and brain gnashers.

Thumbnail is designed by me on pixelLab and other images are screenshot from the movie