''The Return'' is a 2006 American

psychological horror Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subge ...

film directed by

Asif Kapadia Asif Kapadia (born 1972) is a British filmmaker. Academy Award, BAFTA and Grammy winning director Asif Kapadia has made his name directing visually striking films exploring ‘outsiders’, characters living in extreme circumstances, fighting ...

and starring

Sarah Michelle Gellar Sarah Michelle Prinze ( ; born April 14, 1977) is an American actress. After being spotted at the age of four in New York City, she made her screen acting debut in the television film ''An Invasion of Privacy'' (1983). A leading role on the te ...

Kate Beahan Kate Beahan (born 12 October 1974) is an Australian film actress. Beahan was born in Perth. She appeared mostly in movies and TV series in Australia. Her best-known American film role was playing Sister Willow Woodward in the 2006 horror remak ...

, Peter O'Brien, and

Sam Shepard Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, screenwriter, and director whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any write ...

. It was released theatrically on November 10, 2006, and on DVD on February 27, 2007. The Blu-ray was released on October 6, 2009.

Plot

Joanna Mills (

), a travelling rep for a trucking company, is dedicated to her successful career but something of a loner. Since the age of 11 she has been a troubled person, with episodes of

self-mutilation Self-harm is intentional behavior that is considered harmful to oneself. This is most commonly regarded as direct injury of one's own skin tissues usually without a suicidal intention. Other terms such as cutting, self-injury and self-mutilatio ...

and menacing

vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...

s. Normally she avoids returning to her native Texas, but agrees to a trip there to secure an important client. During the trip her visions, which take the form of memories of events not from her life, increase in intensity. She sees a strange face staring back at her in the mirror. Her truck radio plays

Patsy Cline Patsy is a given name often used as a diminutive of the feminine given name Patricia or sometimes the masculine name Patrick, or occasionally other names containing the syllable "Pat" (such as Cleopatra, Patience, Patrice, or Patricia). Among I ...

's "Sweet Dreams" no matter what station she selects. She stops at the scene of an accident that, on the following day, seems not to have happened. Joanna cuts herself in a bar restroom and is narrowly rescued by a friend. She visits her father, who observes that from age 11 she was "a different girl". The visions continue, becoming both more specific and more threatening, centering upon a menacing man she does not recognize and a bar she has never seen, but a picture of which is in one of her catalogs. Drawn by the image to the Texas town where the bar is located, a place she has not been since childhood, Joanna meets a man named Terry Stahl, whose wife, Annie, was stalked, brutally assaulted, and left to die fifteen years before, a crime of which Terry was suspected but not convicted. Joanna continues to have visions of this crime and the events that led up to it, and to discover other links between Annie's life and hers. She meets the real killer and is led by what she has seen in her visions to recover the knife he used from its hiding place. She is then stalked, herself. She finds herself drawn into a repetition of the crime, but this time she stabs her assailant with the recovered knife, using the original weapon to avenge the original crime. The story ends with the revelation that Annie, clinging to life as Terry drove her to the hospital after the original assault, died when his car crashed into one driven by Joanna's father, in which the eleven-year-old Joanna was a passenger. After momentary unconsciousness, the young Joanna seems to have survived the crash. A silent Joanna is seen reflecting on who she is and what has happened to her. She seems to reach an inner resolution of these questions. An alternative ending included on the DVD release more straightforwardly supports the interpretation that Annie's soul has been placed in Joanna's body.

Cast

as Joanna Mills *

as Ed Mills * Peter O'Brien as Terry Stahl *

as Michelle * Adam Scott as Kurt *Darrian Mcclanahan as Young Joanna Mills

Reception

Reviews of the film were mostly negative with 16% positive on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

. The biggest criticism was the very slow pace. The artistic tone and cinematography of the film were praised, as was the film as a whole by some, though the average rating was a 3.9/10. ''The Return'' opened with what distributor

Rogue Pictures Rogue (originally Rogue Pictures) is an American independent production company founded in 1998 by Patrick Gunn and Matt Wall, originally started off as a genre film label of the Universal-affiliated independent film studio October Films and was ...

called a "very disappointing" $4,800,000 weekend gross. Except for trailers and TV spots, there was no publicity nor a premiere for the film, as

was busy shooting the movie '' Possession'' in

Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. The ...

. The film only earned $7.7 million. Worldwide, it made $14,949,851.The Return (2006)
''

Box Office Mojo Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is ...

''. Retrieved 2010-10-28.

References

External links

Official site
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Return, The 2006 films 2006 horror films 2006 psychological thriller films Films scored by Dario Marianelli Films about reincarnation American psychological thriller films American psychological horror films American ghost films Films directed by Asif Kapadia Films set in Texas Films shot in Austin, Texas Intrepid Pictures films Universal Pictures films Films about self-harm Supernatural thriller films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films