The Return

This was far and away the worst movie i've ever seen in my entire life.It was slow, boring, not scary, not funny, not dramatic, notentertaining.

Sarah Michelle Gellar was up to her old playbook of empty expressionsof fright and shock. She couldn't sell her character nor could anyoneelse in the picture.

For those who thought the Grudge was 'kind of alright' then don't gosee this unless you get enjoyment out of wasting your time and yourlife.

I saw this movie for free by the way so I don't want this to comeacross as a rant from a guy that lost 8 bucks on a terrible movie. Itwas free, it still sucked, I hated it.

Avoid.

SOME NOT-SO-SPOILY SPOILERS AHEAD

Why do people, when they are disoriented or sick or scared at a club,cut through the middle of the crowded dance floor on their way to thebathroom?

Who in their right mind would hide under a bed when someone breaks intotheir room?

How often do you knock on a stranger's door and when they don'tIMMEDIATELY answer, you open the door, walk in, shout a few hello's andthen start going through their stuff?

If you were being pursued by someone you just discovered was amurderer, what would you do? Quietly sneak off and hide under a woodenplatform or among metal implements? Run, quietly of course, to a rattyold barn or other decrepit structure?

I could be talking about almost any thriller that's come out in thelast few years, but since this is the "The Return" page, obviously I'mtalking about "The Return." I saw it free because I work at a movietheater and make a point of screening all the "scary" movies. I thoughtthis one was tolerable… aside from the well-worn clichés. SarahMichelle Gellar is really drab and looks kind of "Huh?" through most ofthe film. The details of the plot are slowly given out as the movieprogresses and it's almost enough to make it interesting except therewasn't enough explanation as it moved on and so I was almost lost untilthe last 2/3 of it.

If you're a die-hard thriller fan, it's worth seeing at least once. Ifthere's nothing better at the theater and you really want to watch amovie, eh, I guess it's worth a matinée ticket. If you thought thetrailer made it look like an interesting movie and you can't wait…wait.

How do comments like the one that was the headline by high school girlseven make it on this site, this was the stupidest movie I have everseen, it was ridiculous, how can any moron sit there and say that justbecause a movie makes you jump it is a good movie, that might be themost idiotic thing I have ever heard, I could sneak up behind you andgo "Boo" and it would make you jump, but that does not mean I amqualified to write or direct a movie, not to mention "they tiedeverything together at the end" is not a good reason for a movie to bewell received. What kind of movie would it be if they didn't tieeverything together, I guess that would make it half a movie, not awhole movie. So basically this idiot girl is complimenting them forfinishing the movie, well I love how the youth of today hold the mediaand production companies to such a high standard. No wonder thepolitical system of this country can get away with whatever they want,we have idiots like that coming up in our country, what would happen ifthis girl actually ends up leading something someday, that is a scarythought. Get a life and go watch a real movie sometime, try ShawshankRedemption or On the Waterfront, or something like that, and don'tcomment that it was "boring" after you see it, just use what littlebrain God gave you to analyze it a little.

Let me start off by saying I am not a fan of horror movies. I neverwatch them.

Let me tell you about my experience…

The only reason I watched this movie was because my girlfriend and herfriends wanted to see it over Happy Feet.

…I never saw Happy Feet, but I am sure it is better thanthis…movie? Anyway, we didn't actually expect it to be good…weactually went in just to laugh at it. Cool with me…I have a problemwith ruining the movie for other people in the theater but since it wasjust other couples talking and making out, it did not matter.

After 15 minutes the 2 other people left to go sneak into Borat, amovie I would have gladly seen again over this. The movie was notscary, and not stupid so it would be funny…it was just boring. Itwasn't terrible like "Baby Genuises" terrible, it was terriblelike…not entertaining at all. Avoid.

Now I am no expert, but it seems the problem with the horror industrythese days is that you can have a PG-13 horror that is boring and notscary, or you can have an R gruesome horror movie that either is toobloody or too disgusting for people.

You want a PG-13 horror that sucks but is funny? See "The Grudge."Avoid this movie like the plague…because it may literally bore you todeath.

0/10

Think of the ending of the Grudge 2 with the following :

- a man who repeatedly says the word Sunshine - a cowboy - a love story- Sarah Michelle Gellar cutting herself - and a creepy mirror

OH AND UNDERWATER SEA ANIMALS…yay…

not a good movie… I seriously did not enjoy it whatsoever. The posterfor the movie is extremely misleading as well and I found that it wasjust to suck people into watching it…I can't believe i went.

Save your time and money…go watch Saw III…a film where the writingmakes you feel like there was effort put into it…

Im Mike and Im out

This movie sucks! This dumb movie is straight to video quality at best.It looks like Sarah Michelle Gellar has her face frozen like BenAffleck all through the movie. Cheap attempts to scare people and mutedcolors are all this film will be known for. The whole pacing isterrible and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Peter O'Brien had no chemistryat all. How old was his character supposed to be? What kind of idiotkiller hides a knife in a gas tank? This was really a lousy movie and Iam glad I got my money refunded from the theater manager because thismovie was falsely advertised and intentionally misleading. It was soboring that I could not believe how long this movie felt and it wasonly 85. The trailers before this stinker were more entertaining. Avoidthis loser at all costs!

Moviegoers are basically stupid. We fork over hard-earned (well, insome cases) cash for 90 to 120 minutes of theoretical enjoyment. So farso good, and we as a public are willing to buy into the idea that oursix bucks entitle us to an hour-and-a-half of escapism. The problem isthat going to see a movie is a crapshoot under the best ofcircumstances, and, well, in the worst case, it can be the grounds fora class-action lawsuit against the studio for a severe case of libel,i.e. they promised us this would be interesting, shocking, fun, etc.

None of which The Return is. And, honestly, I knew it was going to beweak when I saw the trailer. It looked like a retread of The Grudge,another Sarah Michelle Gellar joint (also a fairly craptacular moviebut at least that took place in Japan), and, yes, I went to see themovie for the girl. So color me double stupid for expecting anythingelse. I pretty much figured I would sit through a tepid remake of atepid remake, I was prepared for that.

But I was not prepared for the mind-numbing banality that is TheReturn. Gellar plays Joanna Mills, a woman so devoid of a personalityor any human characteristics it's extremely hard to be interested inher, let alone care about her. Joanna is apparently seeing things (deadpeople, a possible killer, a mysterious tavern) and these visions leadher to some nowhere town in Texas where everything is a pasty brown andeveryone acts strangely, and they ALL act as if they know somethin
g wedon't, which of course they do, because we are never told what in thehell is going on.

I mean it. I literally had no idea what in the hell was going onthrough the first two-thirds of this movie. Joanna goes through themotions of tracking down what's going on in her visions, but she picksup clues because she needs to, not because it makes any sense that shedoes. The movie does eventually disclose what happened, but much likean Agatha Christie novel, there's no damn way you could have figured itout and even when you are told, it isn't very satisfying. And then weare only given Joanna's possible connection to the main story in ateaser at the end of the film, by which point we don't care whathalf-assed plot twists might be in store, we just want to get the hellout of there as quickly as we can.

It isn't a horror film, as the trailer promises. If only it were aretread of The Grudge, that might have merely been bad. But The Returntakes boring to a whole new level. Watching Gellar play a character agood 50 IQ points lower than she is was painful, and I wondered overand over what the hell she could have been thinking in taking this role(can she really need the money that bad?). Maybe it's because I've seenher be so good in just about everything else she's done (even the laterembarrassing seasons of Buffy come off like Shakespeare next to thisleaden claptrap), but this is the kind of film you only do for love,money, exposure, or because you lost a bet. So I hereby pardon everyoneelse in the film (an impressively uncharismatic bunch of unknowns andunrecognizables, except for the one actor who had a recurring role onDark Angel, and that tells you a lot about the average talent levelSarah ended up working with here) as, hell, a break is a break. But Ican't fathom what in the hell Sarah was thinking in accepting a scriptthis tepid.

I've beaten this dead horse enough. This is the worst film I've seenthis year, and I've seen Ultraviolet. If that isn't enough to scare youaway from this movie, then you must have as little common sense as thecharacters in the film itself. I'll put it more clearly than the moviecould: DON'T GO.

To all of those saying that this movie was fantastic and one of thebest they've seen: Did we watch the same film? Because what I sawlacked cohesion and ilogic. It went in circles that were completelyunnecessary and it may qualify as the biggest waste of $7 AND time thatI've ever experienced. It explained itself within the last 10 minutesor so and even then the explanation sucked. I felt like it skippedaround way too much. Not to mention, Sarah Michelle's voice is superannoying. Is it just in this film, or has she always been thatirritating? Ugh, what a load of crap. Spare yourself. Don't watch it.Worst hour and 20 minutes ever. Ew.

even the messenger made more sense then this movie,, this oneabsolutely positively made no sense whatsoever,, sarah michelle gellar(buffy) didn't even do a really good job at all, the movie was entirelydisappointing. the characters made no sense whatsoever. the boyfriendstalker, no sense,, the dad sam shephard,, weak let me tell you thatmuch,, the plot line , couldn't' decide where it wanted to go,, thisdirection asif.. something or other i think was trying to capitalize onone of those M Night Shamalyan productions and failed miserably,, thiscould have been a good movie,, but like i said just can't seem to makeup it's mind where it wanted to go,, folks you can skip this one,because mainly it makes no sense at all,, i didn't even see the pointof this movie to tell you the truth.

Don't tell my girlfriend, but I never really watched Buffy the VampireSlayer. I did see the movie staring Donald Sutherland and KristySwanson back in 1992, but that was the extent of my experience.

But there I was two years ago, sitting on a bar patio and when thefuture love of my life (well, for 25 years amortized, anyways)commented on how much she absolutely loved the television program ofthe same name, I lied my ass off and spewed generic comments back like"It's so different from that crappy movie" and "Sarah Michelle Gellarrocks!" The responses got me the girl and I have continued to live thelie for almost 24 months now, but the truth still remains that myexposure to Sarah Michelle Gellar goes as far as Scooby-Doo and TheGrudge (I had to be reminded that she was in I Know What You Did LastSummer).

So when the future mother of my bastard children and I walked theaisles of the local DVD rental store, she stopped and picked up the boxfor Gellar's 2006 film, the Return citing again her excitement to seegood old Buffy again fight evil. I was just happy we both agreed on afilm within 15 minutes of our arrival at the store.

The Return is the other horror/thriller film that Gellar was involvedwith in 2006 after The Grudge 2 and this time, Gellar plays businesswoman Joanna Mills who can't seem to shake visions of a murder thatoccurred some 15 years ago. The visions come in pieces and it seems tocatapult Joanna into a self imposed mission of finding out as much asshe can about the woman in her nightmares that was the victim of thecrime.

Of course, no one said that this was going to be easy. Joanna'spersonal life is a mess and if she isn't being haunted by terrifyingvisions of the murder, she is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend ordealing with the estrangement from her father played by the alwaysversatile Sam Shepard.

And if things weren't complicated enough, Joanna befriends a localtough guy Terry Stahl (Peter O'Brien) who is cloaked in multiple coatsof mystery and just so happens to have appeared in one of Joanna'svisions.

This all leads us down the path taking us to the climax that was aboutas exciting as bumper cars at an amusement park. To be fair there was ascene with about 15 minutes left to go in the film that I didn't seecoming, but that was probably more due to the fact that there was noreason for me to invest my brain cells in trying to get a jump start onthe ending. Instead, I sat flat lined as I watched Joanna, run, passout, or fall all three of which seemed to be ¾ of the films runtime.

The Return was Director Asif Kapadia's American debut film and itshows. Kapadia seems lost in the direction and would rather have thecharacters run around rather than use other devices for plotdevelopment. The entire subplot of the boyfriend was just a waste ofenergy and took too much time before hitting a dead end. And when itcomes to the chemistry between the two leads (Gellar and O'Brien),well, I have more chemistry between my Sunday crossword and the roll oftoilet paper to my left when I am trying to figure out a four letterword for 'crap'.

I know there have been many that are hoping that Gellar takes the batonand becomes the new scream queen of horror, but based on herperformance and interest level in The Return, I think everyone shouldfold up the parchment with her name on it and put it back in the hat.

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