Homepage > Joss Whedon Cast > Sarah Michelle Gellar > Reviews > Sarah Michelle Gellar - "The Return" Movie - Freep.com Review
« Previous : Michelle Trachtenberg - "Law & Order" Tv Series - She plays Willow next week !
     Next : Sarah Michelle Gellar - "The Grudge 2" Movie - Good Quality Screencaps 5 »

Freep.com

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar - "The Return" Movie - Freep.com Review

John Monaghan

Friday 24 November 2006, by Webmaster

REVIEW: ’The Return’ is hauntingly boring

Sarah Michelle Gellar battled countless monsters as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her biggest challenge in “The Return” is to keep from yawning.

Gellar sleepwalks through her role as Joanna, an unlikely trucking fleet rep haunted by images from childhood. When work takes her home to Texas, her dreams morph with a mysterious woman that was likely murdered years ago.

The men in Joanna’s life are a strange bunch, beginning with her father, played by Sam Shepard as if (in a bit of audience wish- fulfillment) he’s in an entirely different film. And what to make of that mysterious stranger that arrives just in time to save our heroine from a rampaging ex-boyfriend (Adam Scott)?

Scripted by first-timer Adam Sussman, “The Return” is slightly more ambitious than your average horror yarn. But it’s also unbelievably dull and hardly scary. The best thing you can say is that it doesn’t rely on special effects to deliver its modest thrills.

Director Asif Kapadia’s visual trick of choice is a hand-held camera with a twitchy zoom lens. Following the modern horror handbook, he drains most of the color from his frame.

This adds an even more surreal touch to the south Texas locales, apparently chosen for the length of time between paint jobs. I am not joking when I say that a side of beef hangs in the hotel lobby where Joanna checks in to complete her paranormal investigation.

“The Return” gives a Texas twang to the Japanese-inspired horror films released here on an almost weekly basis. (Many, like this one, are not prescreened for critics). But even misguided fans of the “Grudge” movies will feel like they’re watching paint peel.