The Return (2006 film)

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The Return

Directed by	Asif Kapadia
Starring	Sarah Michelle Gellar Peter O'Brien Adam Scott Kate Beahan and Sam Shepard
Release date(s)	November 10, 2006
Running time	109 Minutes
Language	English
Budget	15 Million

The Return is a 2006 film directed by Asif Kapadia. The film stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kate Beahan, Peter O'Brien, and Sam Shepard. It was filmed from March 2005, ending sometime that summer. It originally set to release on September 1, 2006. The film then changed its release to November 10, 2006.

1 Story
2 Cast
3 Rating
4 Reception
5 Trivia
6 External links

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Return is focused on a 25 year-old woman named Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a Midwesterner who has strange nightmares about a woman who died 15 years ago. After going to the town of La Salle, Texas for a job promotion, Joanna soon discovers that it is related to the nightmares she has been having along with a farmhouse and a man who seems to be making Joanna his next target.

As a child, Joanna was stalked by a mysterious man while visiting a carnival in La Salle, Texas. Years later, returning to Texas for her job promotion proves to be a bad decision when her radio begins to play "Sweet Dreams" by ((Patsy Cline)). When she sees two cars on the road that appeared to have crashed, she gets out of her truck to help them out. The radio begins to play loudly, and Joanna passes out and wakes up in the middle of a field, only her truck is left on the road, no crashed cars or broken glass.

She goes to her job promotion and convinces the man to sell his company. Afterwards, she goes to visit her friend from La Salle and ends up stabbing herself in the arm for no apparent reason, but luckily her friend finds her and stops the bleeding before she bleeds to death. She visits her father and tells him about the incident, which also happened when she was 11.

She meets a man named Terry Stahl, who's wife's-ex-boyfriend has been stalking her, but the real man has aged many years.

The story ends with the revelation that the deceased woman, clinging to life on the way to a hospital after being brutally assaulted, died when the car carrying her crashed into one in which the ten year old Joanna was a passenger. The young Joanna physically survived the crash, but was her soul replaced by that of the dying woman? Or did she merely receive from the woman a set of vicarious memories, together with an unconscious need to replay, and avenge, the crime? Joanna seems to be pondering some such question in the final frames.

[edit] Cast

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Joanna Mills

[edit] Rating

MPAA rated PG-13 for violence, terror and disturbing images. There is a scene of and a scene of rape.

[edit] Reception

Reviews of the film were generally negative[1], though there were exceptions[2]. The Return also opened with what distributor, Rogue Pictures called a "very disappointing" $4,800,000 weekend gross.[3] Except for TV trailer spots, there wasn't any publicity nor a premiere planned for the film, as Sarah Michelle Gellar was busy shooting Addicted in Vancouver, British Columbia. The movie has so far earned an estimated $7.7 million dollars.

[edit] Trivia

An excerpt from the song "Sweet Dreams" by Pasty Cline, which seems to have a will of its own, appears as the "warning" before many supernatural occurences.