The Return (2006)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Asif Kapadia
Writers Adam Sussman
Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Peter O'Brien, Adam Scott, Sam Shepard
Genre Revenant
Tagline The past never dies. It Kills.
Country

Review

"Where you going Sunshine?" - Griff

Joanna Mills is a travelling sales gal who sells - figure it was trucks but could have been Amway as they don't bother saying. Apparently Texas is out of bounds for her, big huh, but with the chance of scoring a major client Joanna is all over that road trip to the one star state. Unfortunately this irritates one of her co-workers who we soon learn is a plot device in a pretty improbable plot development.

Travelling through Texas Joanna starts to have major car radio issues, gosh darn thing keeps playing Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams (Of You)" even when she inserts a CD. Naturally Buffy, uhmm Joanna, exits the possessed car to find improbably that she is at the scene of a car accident, wonder if that's got anything to do with the resolution. She next wakes up in a field, and then improbably goes to see her prospective client, as you do after demonic radio interference and sleeping in a field. Actually this has jack all to do with the plot but works as a device to get Buffy Joanna to a night club so she can have visions and stuff and then cut herself. Don't worry about it, you'll get used to Joanna's visions as they happen over and over again. Oh and she sure is into cutting herself as well.

Guess Joanna is forced to face the truth about her visions of a Roadhouse, some freaky dude, and her father who never realised something or other was a call for help. Heck it's simply confusing, edited to all buggery, and rehashes a few times so people can get it and all. A complete shambles ensues. Ready to walk the streets of La Salle Texas?

For no particular reason I was pretty keen to see this movie, guess it was due to SMG who I thought did a fine job of things in that Grudge movie that the kids were raving about a few years back, hang about so was I at the time. Unfortunately the Distributor Downunder decided not to release to cinema due to the movie tanking in North America so I kind of had to wait round for the DVD. When it appeared on the shelves of my local DVD outlet I was good to go get it but got sidetracked by something else, and the movie sort of disappeared like the fragment of a nightmare and other poetic shite. Thankfully Universal finally came to my rescue by releasing the movie in a bundled set with four other Studio horror flicks, so brought me one of those and finally got to see the flick two years after it's initial release. All this is a round about way of saying the movie is so incredibly bad that it's already being bundled into cheap release sets in an effort to see a buck end of day by Universal.

SMG's career is really going over the cliff, she was woeful in this one.

It took me two sittings to actually get through this movie. First time at bat I maybe had a few too many wines as I honestly had no idea what was going down, the second time unfortunately I was stone cold sober. The Return is a movie you will have figured out about five minutes in, if sober, and somehow staying awake past the opening flashback scene. There's a simple plot here that gets stretch beyond breaking point to pad out the movie's running, or should that be crawling, time. Director Kapadia throws in the ever reliable shock jump scenes in a fairly regular fashion to at least try and keep the audience awake, pity he telegraphs the scenes really as they may have had a better impact or something. For some reason Kapadia also thinks it would be a real good idea if he uses the same jump scene multiple times. The past may never die, but by hell it's got a problem with repeating itself like ad nausea.

The cardinal sin being committed here is the movie takes itself real serious and is trying to be all arty. Kapadia lenses in washed out frames and there's the notion some yellow tinting has been going down to no discernable reason. The problem with trying for art is the movie simply isn't strong enough to justify the approach. You have seen this plot before, heck even Buffy had a bit of it going down from memory, and sure as heck SMG's next foray onto the big screen also covers the same ground. Talk about your type casting, SMG is pretty much appearing in the same movie this year, is Hollywood really that out of ideas?

For large chunks of this movie you get to watch Joanna drive around in her big old truck, or look at herself in mirrors, queue the double exposure scene. There's nothing going down to advance the plot, and as stated you will have worked it out from about the fifth minute so are left staring at the screen waiting on something to happen, or in fact for Joanna to wake up and smell the coffee. There's more padding going down here than a New York Business Woman's suit. And for heaven's sake what was with the hotel lobby in La Salle, was that a beef carcass in there?

I did have some fun noting the plot foreshadows though. Besides that Patsy Cline song which you just know is going to come home to roost by movie's end, there's the whole seahorse and shell thing happening. Do I even need to hint where that might take us? - thought not, reasonable device however for any teen that stumbled into this movie on the basis of the advertising that went all Grudge 3 on us. Belaboured and clumsy is the best I can describe Director Kapadia's attempts at building anything remotely like tension or plot cohesion.

There's a major flaw in the movie that really brought a smile to my dial. Both Joanna and Griff have aged since the event in the past that's coming back to haunt them, Terry hasn't. Must be something in that Texas drinking water, which could of course explain the whole Bush clan.

If after some chills then you are out of luck here. It's all pretty pedestrian with the odd sudden shock thrown in to get a reaction from anyone still awake during the plot meanderings. Even the Villain isn't all that menacing, and sort of looks like he might be from an adult remedial reading class. Trying not to say retarded here as that might offend some readers, which is more than The Return is ever going to do. Considering the opening flashback scene, young Joanne at the fair with her dad, what ever happened to mum btw? - promised some tension dripping stuff I was pretty disappointed in the Director's inability to achieve anything. Guess because art movies don't have tension or heaven forbid something happening to liven things up. While on the subject of opening fair scenes, what's with Hollywood Directors' obsession with opening a movie with them recently? When A Stranger Calls also went with that approach, and not surprisingly it's pretty much daft in both movies.

Sarah Michelle Gellar (Joanna) pretty much plays a SMG role, this one is interchangeable with Karen from The Grudge (2004). Either SMG is getting type cast or we may have to live with the fact that she's a one trick pony and go on with our lives. See SMG pout, see SMG get that far away look in her eyes. Peter O'Brien (Terry) does a sterling job of looking like a stunned mullet through out, where the hell did they get this guy from. Adam Scott (Kurt) is simply a plot device and plays up to that fact. And Sam Shepard (Ed) is slumming it and doesn't bother even phoning his performance in.

Sorry Ladies there was no T&A on offer, this one is as proper as an Amish spinster.

Dario Marianelli handles the score which is at once overly dramatic and totally fitting Kapadia's visuals. Unfortunately in post production they have amped it up in terms of sound to try and get the kids jumping during the shock scenes. Never a big fan of that stuff, and it's well past it's used by date.

The Return was about as disappointing as you can get down the horror end of town. The MPAA rated it PG13 for violence, terror, and disturbing images. Well they got the violence right, there's some of that involved, but it would be stretching things to include terror and disturbing images in the rating. Some sudden shock scenes foreshadowed by a crashing score. Overall SMG couldn't carry the movie on her own and there simply wasn't enough in the surprise stakes to compensate for a dreary overly serious plot.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  Disappointing effort all round, Geller needs a new agent!