The Return (2006)

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Movie
German title The return
Original title The return
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Asif Kapadia
script Adam Sussman
production Aaron Ryder ,
Jeffrey Silver
music Dario Marianelli
camera Roman Osin
cut Claire Simpson
occupation

The Return is a 2006 American horror film directed by Asif Kapadia . It was shot between March and late summer 2005 in Austin . Originally the film was supposed to be released on September 1, 2006, but the release was later postponed to November 10, 2006. The film was released in Germany on January 18, 2007. The Return was estimated to cost an estimated 15 million US dollars, but grossed just under 7.75 million US dollars in American cinemas until December 14, 2006 (around 12 million US dollars worldwide until March 29, 2009).

content

The film begins with a scene at a fair in La Salle , a small town in Texas . Ed Mills, the widowed father of 11-year-old Joanna Mills, attends a carnival procession with his daughter. While he is at a stand to buy food, Joanna has a vision of a man with heavy boots. Out of fear she runs away and hides under a set up stage. From there she sees how the strange man approaches her and finally seems to pull her out from under the stage with the words "Hello, Sunshine!"

Fifteen years later, Joanna Mills is a down-to-earth sales representative who lives in St. Louis . She is so successful in her job that she even manages to steal an important customer from her ex-boyfriend Kurt - who works for the same company. To convince the latter of her offer, she embarks on a trip back to her homeland in Texas. This leads to the first strange occurrences. While she is driving her car, her radio starts to rustle and finally the song Sweet Dreams by Patsy Cline can be heard . Joanna tries to change the radio station and later switch off the entire radio, but the song continues anyway. She leaves the car in shock and discovers several crashed cars in the immediate vicinity. But before she can do anything, she passes out. After she wakes up after a while, Joanna goes back to the street, where she finds her abandoned truck . However, there is no trace of the collided cars. Joanna eventually reaches La Salle and manages to convince her client to enter into a contract with her company. After her job is done, she calls her former classmate Michelle to meet her. During the call, the connection is interrupted and a strange male voice can be heard on the line. Later in the bar, Joanna is not well and when she goes to the toilet, she has another vision. In it, Joanna goes into a nameless red bar, where she sees a man at the counter before she finally goes to a phone. The vision suddenly ends when Joanna cuts her left arm with a knife in the phone booth . After searching for a while, Michelle finds her friend in the ladies' room, bleeding from her upper arm. On the way home, Joanna tells her friend about the red bar, which she has never seen in her life. When she arrived at her accommodation, she recognized the bar in old documents on a brochure from La Salle.

Joanna goes to her father Ed's house, where she is warmly received and welcomed. As she looks around her former room, she finds old drawings of her showing some seahorses . During breakfast the next morning, Joanna asks her father about the events of La Salle, which happened fifteen years ago. When Ed replies that from that day on he could no longer control his daughter, who was then violent, Joanna reproaches him for needing help and leaves the house hurt.

She finds the red bar, which is still closed, and takes a room in a hotel. In the evening, Joanna heads for the bar, whereupon she realizes that she looks exactly like in her vision - she finds the phone and sees the man at the counter. When she sits down next to the man at the bar, she is molested by her ex-boyfriend Kurt, who has been chasing her. Some visitors to the bar interfere and Joanna escapes back to the hotel. When she tries to enter her room, Kurt ambushes her again and tries to rape her. But finally the man Joanna saw at the bar in the bar intervenes, saves Joanna and beats Kurt on the street. The number and intensity of the visions increases. In the mirrors of her hotel room she sees the face of an unknown woman.

The next morning, Joanna asks the hotel owner who the man who saved her was. She explains that the man's name is Terry Stahl and that he has a very bad reputation. Despite the warnings, Joanna goes to Terry's farm. She calls for him several times and steps into the apartment through the open door. Just as she sees the picture of a woman on the wall, whom she knows from her visions, and the song on the radio sounds again from one of the rooms, Terry appears and confronts her because he thinks she is a burglar. Joanna thanks for his help. Back at the hotel, she dreams of Terry and visions come over them again, although it seems unclear whether it will take place in reality or not.

Over time, Joanna and Terry get closer and closer. After a mutual meeting, Joanna is again followed by the mysterious man, sees a child in the back seat of her car and the woman in the mirror in her hotel. She drives to Terry again, but he is not there. She walks into an old shed on Terry's farm and finds the same seahorses drawn on the wall as her drawings, which is strange since she has never been to this barn in her life. As she looks at the painting, she is overcome by another vision of the mysterious man in the boots trying to rape a woman in this barn. While the woman defends herself screaming, she can tear off an earring from the perpetrator . Finally the man stabs the woman with a knife and escapes. The vision ends and the viewer sees Joanna hurt herself again with a knife.

Terry finds the unconscious woman and takes care of her in his house. She confesses to him that she is hurting herself and doesn't know why. Then she asks him about the fate of his wife, whereupon Terry replies that she was murdered. When asked who the murderer was, he replied that it depends on who she asked. He found his wife in the barn as he found Joanna that day. But people would say he killed them. Joanna sees the earring, which the woman from the vision had torn off the perpetrator, dangling from Terry's neck, whereupon Terry replies that it belongs to his wife and that Joanna is chasing them out of the house.

On the way back from Texas, Joanna stops at a gas station to get some provisions . In a photo on a wall she recognizes the man in the boots. The gas station attendant demands payment, calling it "Sunshine". After Joanna pays, she discovers some wrecked cars in the back yard of the gas station. In one of these wagons she finds the knife that was used to kill Terry's wife. As she is pulling out the gun, she is disturbed by the gas station attendant. Joanna realizes that the gas station attendant is the killer and drives away. He overtakes her, pushing her off the road and ending up with her car in a small river. Joanna manages to free herself from the wreckage , flees to Terry's house and yells for help. She runs into the old barn where Terry's wife was murdered. There she is chased by the murderer. Finally Terry arrives at the scene and is now attacked by the man himself. In the end, Joanna can stab the murderer with the murder weapon and thus saves herself and Terry.

At the end the puzzles and mysterious incidents are resolved parallel to the course of the final plot.

Fifteen years ago, Terry's wife wanted to visit her husband in the red bar. Before she entered it, however, she was molested by her later murderer. She later leaves the bar in front of her boyfriend and is followed by her tormentor, who then breaks into her house and tries to pull her out of her hiding place under the bed. Terry's wife escapes to the barn, where she is raped. Terry finds his wife seriously injured and wants to drive her to a hospital. At the same time, Joanna and her father Ed were on their way home from the fair. When the father stopped briefly on the side of the road, the two cars collided, with Terry's wife passing away and parts of her memories being passed on to Joanna.

background

  • The film marks the American debut of director Asif Kapadia.
  • The film was shot in Austin, Texas.

criticism

The film received mostly bad reviews in both America and Germany.

  • Darrian McClanahan ( Varitey.com ): "With its bleak settings and drained color palette," The Return "is more self-consciously somber than the script's logic gaps, uninspired character writing and general familiarity can justify."
  • Christoph Petersen ( Filmstarts.de ): "The Return" is a simple, completely unspectacular horror film that draws its justification from the strong main character and the atmospheric staging. "
  • Jeannette Catsoulis, a New York Times critic , describes The Return as "a routine thriller with an engrossingly frenetic shooting style." Furthermore, she adds that the director Asif Kapadia tries to create a gentle creepiness with his film rather than depicting a complete horror. Above all, the critic praises the work of the German cinematographer Roman Osin , who worked the scene with a subtle selection of green and brown tones, which intensified the atmosphere of a rotting forest. Catsoulis concludes her criticism with the conclusion that there were scary films that year, but none that “smelled like rot”.
  • The Los Angeles Times critic Sam Adams rates the film as rather poor. On the one hand, he criticizes the fact that the director Asif Kapadia and the screenwriter Adam Sussman did not manage to create a basic sense of place, since it is not clear from the start exactly where the film is playing, and on the other hand, The Return is completely unrealistic and that Action therefore incomprehensible. Another point of criticism is that the film relies on horror film clichés, which means that the viewer always knows how the film would end. He judges Sarah Michelle Gellar's role to be "brave and sullen - [...] - a role that suppresses her comic talents and leaves her only to suffer in peace."
  • Even the star critic Andreas Klatt criticized some points on The Return , but also highlights some positive aspects. He also praises the creepy atmosphere, as well as the "close-ups of the scared Sarah Michelle Gellar." In addition, Klatt puts the film on a par with Blair Witch Project , and explains the lesser success of The Return with the fact that the director tried a psychological thriller to create a horror and a romance film in one work, which clearly damaged the film. He also criticizes that The Return is too lengthy and illogical, offers too little plot, and has poor dialogues.
  • Kenan Zahirovic, a critic for TV Movie, sees the film as a step backwards for Sarah Michelle Gellar after the much better films Scooby Doo and The Grudge . The film is mainly criticized because it is "without meaning or story", and also wastes the low tension it creates in a bad finale. The reviewer concludes that Sarah Michelle Gellar's new hair color is the most exciting thing about The Return .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times of November 11, 2006 - A Young Woman Sickened by a Triple Shot of Stalkers
  2. ↑ Sam Adams in the LA Times on November 13, 2006 - Sarah Michelle Gellar is game, but glum, in this lurching thriller.
  3. ↑ Andreas Klatt in Stern from January 18, 2007 - When the monster rages in the soul
  4. ↑ Kenan Zahirovic in the TV Movie from January 12, 2007