Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a 25-year-old woman who works as a traveling rep for a trucking company, a job which forces her to be constantly on the road. Although she has earned praise and promotions from her employers for her seemingly tireless efforts, deep down Joanna is depressed. She also harbors a terrible secret, the result of an accident that occurred when she was 11.
Since then, Joanna hasn't been the same person. She's prone to self-mutilation and barely sleeps, but worst of all, Joanna has strange, sometimes terrifying visions — visions of a strange man coming after her, of a bar she's never seen before, and of an unfamiliar woman. On her latest assignment, Joanna returns to her hometown, and as the visions become more frequent, Joanna tries to solve the mystery behind them, and put her past behind her once and for all.
I thought that the actors did an okay job. Gellar seems to be falling into the horror movie trap, filming The Return after The Grudge and The Grudge 2. However, she wasn't bad in this film as a frail, morose-looking girl. Peter O'Brien was pretty good as Terry Stahl, a mysterious man who may have the answers to Joanna's visions. Unfortunately, the positives about the film end here.
The Return is supposed to be a horror movie, but it just wasn't scary. I've seen scarier X-Files episodes. Director Asif Kapadia employs the standard attributes of a horror movie, but they are so predictable and just fall flat. For example, he uses jump cuts a few times in conjunction with screeching music, but the resulting reactions from me were more of an "eh" rather than a "holy shit!" The radio keeps playing the same song, even though Joanna tries to switch stations. Oooh, scary. Not.
Some may argue that The Return isn't meant to be scary because of its PG-13 rating. Bullshit. Just because a movie is rated R doesn't mean that it's scarier. It just means that there's a lot of swearing, blood, and naked tits. The Sixth Sense was scary and creepy as all hell, and it had a PG-13 rating. Therefore, the rating is no excuse for The Return being boring.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - Chris Beaumont
You were much kinder than I was to this boring excuse for movie.
2 - T. Rigney
The Return was very lame. However, I do highly recommend Kapadia's The Warrior, especially if you enjoy samurai films.