Search - The Return (Widescreen Edition) on DVD

Don't Call It A Comeback

Mark Eremite | Seoul, South Korea | 05/23/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It wasn't until the last five minutes of "The Return" that I realized I was watching a halfway decent film. The story, about a young businesswoman who begins to have strange hallucinations, is meted out in artful bits that play mum with their secrets until the final frames of the film. As some have remarked, this is not unlike The Sixth Sense, but that movie's twist was propelled by the plot, and the meat of the movie had enough drama to keep less astute viewers interested. "The Return," on the other hand, spends ninety minutes making very little sense at all and taking its sweet time to do so.



An oddly aged Sarah Michelle Gellar plays our lead, the tormented Joanna Mills. Gellar is filmed in harsh, unflattering light and spends much of the film looking confused (and rightfully so). It turns out that the decision to frame her in such ashen tones was deliberate and, given the movie's twist, well-advised. Not so smart was the decision to have her walk around in an ineffectual daze while she sees people who aren't there, revisits locales she's never seen before (?), and watches her eye color flicker from brown to blue. Gellar's Joanna is hardly there at all.



Also absent in the film are any elements of suspense or tension. The story tries to use things like an aggressively lecherous coworker (the shrew-faced Adam Scott) and a repeated bar from Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" to spur the suspense. It's hard, though, to prickle the spine when a viewer has no idea what exactly they're supposed to be afraid of.



Movies with the requisite twist only really work when the audience is led to believe something erroneous and then has that misconception yanked out from under them. "The Return" leads you to believe nothing, asking instead that the well-executed ambience be enough reason to stick with the script's senselessness in the hopes that the pay-off will be enough to justify over an hour of quiet confusion.



The pay-off, to be clear, is well-done. It brings to the story a cohesiveness that is almost enjoyable. It is the sort of "Ohhhhh!" moment that gives meaning to every mystifying element that came before it. The story, in light of this, is well-written.



But it is not well-done. The movie is only good in retrospect, but not from front-to-back. The presence of an always-excellent Sam Shepard and the excellent closure of the conclusion don't make up for the mind-numbing (and confusing) clap-trap that makes up 95% of the viewing experience. "The Return" is artistic, tightly plotted, and composed of interesting ideas. But it's still not that great."