The Return (2006)

Best movie of this year hands down!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the worst films to date. Seriously, the reviews giving this a high rating are the stupid ones. A bore from beginning to the end is right. Sarah should be ashamed of agreeing to do this film. One of her worst films ever. A quick buck for her.I can't stand this site any more, because we got some idiots here. I swear people are either slow or just have no clue what a good movie is, because they rate a crappy movie as good and a great movie as bad. Bass ackwards. I think 4.8 for this movie is way too high.There is nothing interesting in this movie to keep anyone entertained. I only watch it, because there is nothing else on the television, and Escape channel shows it a lot. Annoys me that the television is just a bunch of repeats of shows and movies. Nothing original or new to watch. Television now a days is crap.The grudge was way better, and that was not that good either.

Sarah Michelle Gellar cuts herself on the leg as a kid and then on the arm as an adult... and because of two self-inflicted knife wounds some 10-15 years apart, we're supposed to believe that she's a troubled woman.That, unfortunately, is about as well scripted as this sore-fest is. We get told via someone's dialogue how troubled she is, that she's always moving around, and then later, she tells some bloke that she's kind of lost so keeps moving around. Yeah, it's that bad... only, not much seems to happen in between.Around the 45 minute mark there were hints of her character having some kind of repressed memories that are haunting her, and turning it off to take a phone call at the hour 6 minute mark, with the killer hot on her trail in some woods, I realised that I actually didn't care what happened in the end and never put the film back on.Normally, films that I turn off get a 1, but Sarah does her best to pull us into a tremendously non-event of a story and had I not been interrupted, I may have sat through it until the end... had I not dozed off.I honestly couldn't recommend this film to anybody.

The best thing about this low-key supernatural chiller is the presence of Asif Kapadia as director, although what he's doing here is anyone's guess. Kapadia's a director who's difficult to pigeonhole, and he clearly isn't at home with this otherwise routine story of a girl who may be possessed by the spirit of a murder victim. For a far better example of the kind of film Kapadia excels at, check out his exceptional FAR NORTH.The presence of Sarah Michelle Gellar immediately reminds one of THE GRUDGE, but to be fair THE RETURN never depicts cheesy apparitions or predictable scare sequences. But that doesn't mean it's very good. In actual fact, it's a bit of a bore, one of those films with a too-slim plot that seems stretched out beyond all reason in order to sustain a feature-length movie. Thus half the stuff that happens on-screen (such as the scenes involving Adam Scott's villain) is totally extraneous to the main story.The film's well-shot but the scripting below par. Gellar once again struggles to bring life or vitality to an underwritten leading role, and you start to wonder if she's really cut out for movie parts. There was some novelty for me in seeing ex-NEIGHBOURS actor Peter O'Brien in the supporting role, but he also has little to do other than look moody and mysterious. The supernatural elements are subdued, the mystery elements too dull to entertain, and come the clichéd climax I was ready to switch it off. THE RETURN is a film that never once lifts from the norm.

A film for the thinking mind by Asif Kapadia (The Warrior), but it's not as scary as the synopsis makes you think.It is however a very well acted psychological thriller with Sarah Michelle Gellar in her comfort zone as Joanna, a girl who is plagued by memories that are not her own.She ventures into her past to try and trace the source of her nightmarish life all while trying to keep her psychotic stalker ex-boyfriend(Adam Scott) at bay. Sam Shepard co-stars as her distraught and grieving forever father.I've seen a lot of bad reviews on here and it just makes me wonder where people leave their brains when they go to the movies. Not everything is about pyrotechnics and action sequences, just imagine what can of world we would be living if every movie was made to be like 'Transformers' and 'Iron Man'. Ugh!