I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed Sarah Michelle Gellar. She delivers.

This is a mystery / drama. The thriller and horror portions are barely there.

I think I missed something in the plot, but the movie still seems like a smart art piece.

The best thing about this low-key supernatural chiller is the presence of Asif Kapadia as director, although what he's doing here is anyone's guess. Kapadia's a director who's difficult to pigeonhole, and he clearly isn't at home with this otherwise routine story of a girl who may be possessed by the spirit of a murder victim. For a far better example of the kind of film Kapadia excels at, check out his exceptional FAR NORTH.

The presence of Sarah Michelle Gellar immediately reminds one of THE GRUDGE, but to be fair THE RETURN never depicts cheesy apparitions or predictable scare sequences. But that doesn't mean it's very good. In actual fact, it's a bit of a bore, one of those films with a too-slim plot that seems stretched out beyond all reason in order to sustain a feature-length movie. Thus half the stuff that happens on-screen (such as the scenes involving Adam Scott's villain) is totally extraneous to the main story.

The film's well-shot but the scripting below par. Gellar once again struggles to bring life or vitality to an underwritten leading role, and you start to wonder if she's really cut out for movie parts. There was some novelty for me in seeing ex-NEIGHBOURS actor Peter O'Brien in the supporting role, but he also has little to do other than look moody and mysterious. The supernatural elements are subdued, the mystery elements too dull to entertain, and come the clichéd climax I was ready to switch it off. THE RETURN is a film that never once lifts from the norm.

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!