THE RETURN

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Director: Asif Kapadia
Screenplay: Adam Sussman
Gellar's role: Joanna Mills
With: Peter O'Brien, Alan Scott, and Sam Shepard
US Release Date: 10 November 2006
Length: 85 minutes
Genre: Mystery/Horror

A traveling businesswoman begins to have nightmares about a murder that occurred 15 years previously. She returns to her hometown in Texas where her father (Sam Shepard) still lives. Soon she is drawn to the old farmhouse where the murder took place.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Return

Jeanette Catsoulis reviewed the film for The New York Times: "THE RETURN aims for mild creepiness rather than outright horror. Helping considerably is the German cinematographer Roman Osin, who gave last year’s 'Pride & Prejudice' its authentic 18th-century griminess. Here he captures the Texas locations with a subdued, greasy palette of browns and grays, so that almost everything on screen is the color of rotted wood. You may see scarier movies this year, but none so redolent of decomposition."

This is a mystical mystery with a Rayond Chandler-like plot. Creative use of perspective illuminates the main character (Joanna Mills) nicely. The bleakness of the landscape creates a murky mood that is sustained throughout the tale, even after Joanna solves her puzzle. The crossroads shown at one point in the story would be in the same general vicinity as the one shown in the fim "Cast Away", and it is shown a second time, still bleak and desolate. In the end, Joanna remains in the wilderness, but at least she discovers why.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Return

The DVD (at least one version of it) includes "The Alternate Ending: Too Shocking for the Big Screen". The only difference apparent in the Alternate Ending is that Joanna and the man drive off together into the sunset instead of the film ending before they decide on a direction. It could be that the murder victim who has been intermittently possessing Joanna finally takes over completely and comes back from the dead in Joanna's body, but that is by no means clear.

Michael Gingold wrote in Fangoria: "Gellar is capable enough in her most grown-up genre role yet, and she and O’Brien (an Australian actor who’s effortlessly convincing as a down-home Texan) do good work with characters who don’t have too much in the way of shading. The rest of the actors are perfectly fine in functional parts, including the great Sam Shepard, who doesn’t have enough to do as Joanna’s estranged father. After a couple of set-up scenes in the first act, he disappears until close to the very end, where a concluding sequence finally reveals Joanna’s original connection to the past events. It’s a nicely done sequence that graces The Return with something of an emotional payoff."

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THE RETURN can be purchased from Amazon Prime Video, and is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Eleven minutes of deleted scenes are available on YouTube.

The film was originally titled REVOLVER, but the title was changed when another film with that name was released in 2005.

CAST

TRAILER

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The Return - poster