31 Days of Halloween: Revival

2025, download -- 3 / 10 episodes

I once said, "It wouldn't be Halloween without something by Mike Flanagan." I should have kept my big mouth shut as all his shows and movies are still forthcoming, while 2024's The Life of Chuck is not Halloweenish, nor watched yet. But, its nice that there is usually something on TV, this season or this year, that is genre appropriate. And people coming back from the dead is Halloweenish, right?

A reporter and a crematorium/morgue staff member have a traumatic beginning to an event in the rural Wisconsin town of Wausau -- the guy being toasted kicks the door off, and then the person in the body bag sits up. Meanwhile across town, Deputy Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) is trying to quit her job and leave town, but her dad, the Sheriff (David James Elliot, JAG) won't have any of it. Revival Day interrupts her plans.

A month later, the town is still under quarantine, nobody coming in or going out. No mention of food logistics, but at least their lockdown has been lifted. The month has proven that all the people who died within a two week period of the fateful day woke up. Miracle or supernatural or freak physics phenomena? Nobody knows, but the CDC has sent Dr. Ibrahim Rahin (Andy McQueen, Mrs. Davis) to investigate. One doctor, and maybe some support staff? Seems underplayed.

Like most SyFy / Canadian specific TV, its focused on the people element, so the first three episodes are about getting to know the characters, including Em Cypress (Romy Weltman, Slasher), the younger sister, who turns out to have also revived, waking up from drowning in the river, but with no memory of how she died. But she's having weird visions and filling sketch books with ominous imagery. All the Revived are normal, but for an encounter with old Arlene Stankiewicz who has been pulling out her own teeth, watching them grow back -- oh yeah, side effect of being revived -- you are now invulnerable, and heal from any wound; ANY wound. Arlene goes bonkers and kills her own daughter in law, which leaves the town nervous that maybe other revivers are going to go off the rails.

Its not bad. Its been a while since we had some familiar Canadian scifi/horror/specfic, so its almost like comfort food. I covered some of the plethora of fictional media that deal with this same topic back in 2014, and the graphic novel from which this was adapted is 2012, so right in there. Unlike many TV shows, where three episodes is enough to determine whether to give it a pass, I have a feeling, again like much Canadian produced TV, this will be OK enough but satisfaction will come only if they handle the final few episodes of the season well. I mean, something is going on, we just have to slowly reveal what it is and stretch it out enough to last more than one season. I am not convinced so far this will get its second.