CommentsXp Best movie ever!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Davis P I really like Sarah Michelle Gellar, but this movie was just plain terrible. I mean that's all there is to it, it's a very dull and effortless movie. The acting is pretty so-so to be honest. Gellar isn't bad per say but it's certainly not her best performance and I think she could've done better. The other actors are just so-so, like the rest of the movie. The script is very lackluster, it doesn't really give a lot of depth to the characters or the storyline. I was originally intrigued by the plot and the trailer, that's why I decided to watch it, but I unfortunately let down. The plot looks like it could be interesting and be a good set up for a well made film, but it just never turns out. It all begins with Sarah Michelle Gellar's character as a child, it shows what happens to her while at a fair with her father. Then it goes to her current day and she is heading back home for some business, when she returns home she starts to experience things that remind her of what happened all those years ago. The suspense really doesn't work and the movie is also void of any creepy feeling or scariness. It just kind of jumps from scene to scene showing what Sarah Michelle Gellar is doing and discovering. But the issue is that nothing she's doing is in the least bit interesting, nothing keeps the audience invested or wanting to keep watching. I contemplated turning it off but I decided to finish it. 1/10 for the return. REALLY not worth anyone's time.

David Arnold Since the age of 11, Joanna Mills has been having strange visions but doesn't know the reason why. When her latest business trip takes her to Texas, she decides to visit her dad and also a small town called La Salle that's been in her visions. It's here she also meets Terry, a seemingly troubled individual that has been alienated by the towns residents. Joanna's visions continue, but they start to become more vivid and the more she sees, the more she starts to understand what is going on and not all secrets remain unknown.The Return is one of those films where the ending saves it from completely bombing, reason being is because the 70 minutes preceding the end scenes are so slow they make watching cricket seem exciting. Don't get me wrong...the story itself is actually pretty good (even if it's not that original) and I don't usually mind a slower-paced film, but the execution is what let's it down for me. You actually sit there hoping the ending saves the film, and it does. Just.It's also a pretty complex story and is one that you most definitely have to pay attention to right from the very start. If you don't then you will have no hope of understanding it. One other thing...if you're expecting some kind of creepy, scary horror then you'll need to keep looking as this most definitely isn't one of those films. There is some decent suspense to it - eventually - but overall it's hardly a gripping tale and it most definitely is NOT a horror film.The acting is also pretty wooden throughout, and I really do think that Sarah Michelle Gellar is completely overrated, especially in this role, because she just seems to wander through it aimlessly with the odd few "scream queen" moments. I really can't understand some of the rave reviews that The Return has been given by some people as it really is just - apart from the last 10 minutes or so - a bit of a snore-fest.It's definitely not the best and you're not missing that much if you choose not to see it.

Jackson Booth-Millard I wondered if this film with The Grudge actress was another one based on a Japanese original scary movie, it wasn't, and I knew it was most likely going to be rubbish like the critics rated it so, but I thought I should try it anyway, from director Asif Kapadia (Senna). Basically Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a travelling business woman, she is a sales representative for a trucking company, when she was aged eleven she and her father had a car crash, and she is being haunted by strange and sometimes violent returning supernatural visions of this. But on her trip to her native Texas, which she normally avoids, she experiences intense visions that are not from her own life, she sees a strange face in mirrors and the song "Sweet Dreams" by Patsy Cline keeps repeating on radios all around her, she also drives past a car crash and sees a strange man she doesn't recognise. She decides to go to the Texas town she has been to since childhood, in the bar she meets Terry Stahl (Peter O'Brien) whose wife Annie (Erinn Allison) was stalked and brutally fifteen years ago, and as Joanna's visions continues she finds connections between the murder of Annie and her life, she does eventually find out who the killer was and becomes stalked herself. In the end, after the killer is defeated and avenged with his own murder weapon, it turns out that as a little girl when Joanna and her father crashed the car they collided with Annie and Terry, so she can finally settle with her visions disappearing having resolved these unanswered questions from her past. Also starring Adam Scott as Kurt, Kate Beahan as Michelle, The Right Stuff's Sam Shepard as Ed Mills, Frank Ertl as Ambrose Miller, Darrian McClanahan as Young Joanna Mills, Brad Leland as Mr. Marlin, Bonnie Gallup as Bella and J.C. MacKenzie as Griff / Young Griff. Gellar definitely lacks enough psychological depth to make a credible character, and the scary moments are nowhere near enough to make you jump or even get a startled blink, the story of a person haunted by past and related memories is very slow and not fully thought out, it gets to a point where attempts to scare you get annoying, especially the constant repeating of the song on the radio, it is just ultimately a boring and pointless supernatural thriller. Pretty poor!

midge56 Producers... This could have been a great movie with an excellent box office earning, but you made serious errors. The rating of seven was for the intent of the writer and the storyline... not the bad results from a poor director.The majority of the public has no desire to watch movies where a main character purposely cuts on themselves. This is very disturbing for most people and does not add to the movie. It is a huge "turn off" for the bulk of the audiences and eliminates most of families as well. That is a huge chunk out of your revenues. There are innumerable alternative peculiarities to depict a character with psychological issues and childhood traumas without using cutting. Is catering to a bad director's insistence on using such an offensive theme worth losing your investment? There was another movie which also used this theme called "The Alphabet Killer." It ruined the entire movie. Even for a true movie, inclusion of self-injury never adds to the movie, true or otherwise. If you notice, the audience ratings between "The Return" and Alphabet Killer were only 1% apart on ratings. Their movie was 14% while this one was 15%. That should provide examples of hard facts in regard to how "cutting" offends audiences. While there are probably a few viewers who would claim otherwise, you can rest assured they are in the extreme minority. So, make your choice... do you want to make money or not?Neither ending was good. They had no redeeming qualities. Just about any JQ public with zero film experience could have done a better job. This was a good story which was spoiled by a bad director. Even worse because your director appeared to have erroneous, preconceived stereotypical view of the US audiences as if throwing in a bit of cowboy flavor would appeal to us across the pond. The boots with the dress were positively ridiculous as was the radio station selection. The majority of our radio stations are top 40's oldies. Not C&W. You would only find that in the panhandle of the state to the north. Dallas and Houston are modern technology centers. Anyone dressing like a cowboy sticks out like a sore thumb. Talk about bad stereotypes! Perhaps the Los Colinas studios might have given you a better crew with better advice than Austin.Having also lived in Europe, I'm familiar with the concept that Americans are conceived as loud, ill-mannered, trigger-happy cowboys. While some of that may be true to some degree with a smaller percent of the population like Tom Arnold's characters, it does not translate to movie audiences and gross revenues by salting this stereotyped approach into movies. You don't win audiences by trying to appeal to the worst elements. If you want to "country-fi" a movie... then it needs to be a "country-theme" movie. You can't take a sci-fi (for instance) and try to country-fi that. This director was totally out of his element and should have realized it when he took the job. He didn't have much of a resume to begin with. It didn't make sense to keep bringing in this rapist coworker s who kept appearing out of thin air completely out of context nor did his actions match the storyline. His actions simply made no sense with the base motive. Rape is not a reaction to stealing clients. There was no groundwork leading to his scenes or actions. His appearance and behavior just fell out of the blue.The dead wife, Annie, should have had a different hair color so the audience could differentiate between the characters when the film was flashing back and forth between mirror images and memories. Their appearance was far too similar to be able to keep it separated.The next issue was the Patsy Cline songs. This movie was tailored for younger fans of psycho thrillers but used CW songs which the audience didn't recognize nor appealed to them. This was not a country western movie. By the end of the first scene with the Cline song, I was already painfully sick of the song long before the scene had thankfully come to an end. While I'm not a younger audience, I did not care for the Patsy Cline songs and they did not achieve the desired effect. I had to read Wikipedia to figure out what you were trying to achieve with the songs. An audio or visual prelude is appropriate only if the media chosen gives that sense of expectation to the viewer. Choose a "supernatural sound" instead. You don't have to pay royalties for "eerie" sounds.The next problems were the main characters psychological issues which did not match the connection with the past incident. Her desire to keep moving, keep on the road and to harm herself did not fit the premise of what her character supposedly suffered. Quite frankly, the director was an extremely poor choice and you apparently got what you paid for. Have you ever produced a movie before or were the financiers just looking for something to do with idle cash? I didn't see any evidence of experience on the management or direction of this film.If you want people to go see a movie, then you need to advertise it. You can't make money if you are not willing to follow through on providing minimal publicity. It looks like the financiers just barely broke even. Either this was the worst directed and worst produced movie either made by novices or incompetents, or the producers were simply looking for a loss to write off on their taxes. It is hard to imagine that anyone could have done such a worse job of directing.