My Bottom Line above makes me look like the world’s biggest tool so please, before I have every woman in the world screaming at me and saying “Whatchu mean “Allowed!?!?” Boy you don’t allow us nothing!!!” (I just had a weird Rosie Perez moment), let me explain.
I love my wife dearly. She is my best friend. She is my equal in all things EXCEPT her choice in movies. Yes, she’s a horror fan so we at least have a genre in common but her choice in movies bites the big Kahuna Tuna.

She will NEVER choose a popular new release. She will NEVER choose a popular release that maybe came out a month ago. She will NEVER choose a popular release of any kind. In her mind, if Blockbuster is renting more than two of any film then it must be crap.
However, if it sits alone, if it stars people that I have never heard of by a director no one knows, if the movie title doesn’t register in my brain, well then it must be pure gold Jerry.

Since I’m the guy who carries the rental card, I’m also the guy who carries the films to the counter. Her... eccentricity... has caused me to quickly scan all her choices when she’s not looking. Nine times out of ten the following conversation happens:

“Hon… are you in the mood for subtitles tonight?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you do know that the film you chose is in Spanish (or Japanese, or German, or Inuktitut), don’t you?”
“Ohhhh really? Man I hate that.”
“well... maybe if you chose something from a shelf that was higher than your knee...” I mumble under my breath.
“What?” She asks innocently
“Nothing... Lets find something else.”

She bombed out a lot and we got to see many of my picks. Just recently, though, she’s been on something of a roll. Her eyes are off the floor and she was the one who chose Zodiac for us, a film we both thoroughly enjoyed.
And then the last time we went out she showed me the box for The Return. There was one copy in the store.
I looked at it suspiciously. The front cover had a cool “Ring”-esque feel to it, the clips on the back of the box looked interesting and it starred someone I had at least heard of; Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Lets give it a shot.

It was so bad that it took us three days to watch the total film. I couldn’t not watch it. I’m a masochist (can I say that in Movies?). If I rent something, it MUST be watched no matter how bad... and truly this was the worst film I had rented in… well ever.
I hated to even waste the energy writing this but then thought to myself, "There’s a lot of good folks in Movies, I must warn them.”

Plot:
Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a pretty, aggressive sales rep for a trucking company. Originally from Texas, she doesn’t like to return home because of odd memories and visions that she gets sometimes. Since she was eleven years old she has been going through them, as well as moments when she hurts herself.
She accepts an important In Person Sales meeting near her hometown, severely upsetting an ex boyfriend and fellow co-worker (Adam Scott) who thought that the “deal” should have been his. Her visions and moments of self-mutilation become stronger. She sees another woman’s face in the mirror, she sees a bar she has never been to, she sees the re-occurring figure of a man she has never met who keeps saying “Where you going SunShine?” and late one night, on a lonely stretch of road, her radio will play nothing but the same Patsy Cline song.
She exits her car to witness a horrible traffic accident. She passes out and when she wakes the next morning nothing has happened.
Driven by her visions, she tracks down the bar she keeps seeing in her dreams. Her co-worker has followed her and attacks her in the bar before following her to her hotel room where he plans to beat and rape her.
She is saved by a stranger named Terry Stahl (Peter O’Brien) and he beats her co-worker senseless. The two become continually closer (despite the obvious fifteen to twenty years that separates them) and we find out that Terry’s wife died some years before and everyone suspects him of killing her.
From there, Janna uses her visions to solve the murder of Terry’s wife and get revenge.
There is a surprise ending that was no surprise.

My Thoughts?:
Dear God, I can’t write this fast enough. My fingers feel “tainted” just tapping out the words. Seriously... it burns. The acting was completely monotone. Every scene looked the same. Peter O’Brien was “OK” and comes across as a poor man’s Viggo Mortensen.
Sam Sheppard (Joanna’s father) was wasted. Centering a movie on Gellar was a horrible idea. She’s just not that good an actress. Every aspect of this film when not stupid, was boring. After thirty minutes you no longer cared about what was happening.
The flashbacks rarely worked because, with one exception, everyone looked the same age.
The surprise ending was given away on the film’s case and was presented very watered down and convoluted, so that you were supposed to decide what the reality was on your own. The romance angle never worked for me. There was no reason for the car radio to play ghostly Patsy Cline music… that was just ridiculous.

The only positive thing I can think of was that they didn’t choose the Ending Too Shocking For Theatres that was included as a bonus on the DVD. The only Shocking thing about it was its idiocy and how it destroyed the time-lines created as well as the romance angle of the film.

I said that I would save a one star rating for the worst films in history... movies like Neighbors and From Justin To Kelly. Given the stellar fourteen million worldwide that this film earned, I'd say it nicely fits in to that category. No big surprise that it went "Straight To Video" in a few countries.

Avoid like the plague.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older