| 67 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's more haunting than it has any right to be, thanks to its love of long, lonesome highways and the way the violence of the past bleeds into the present.
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| 50 |
New York Post
The minimalist style keeps the suspense warm. The movie is unusual among teen horror flicks in that it largely avoids the usual cheap thrills and bursts of scare music. Instead, it carefully repeats isolated images and sound bites until they take on a shivery power.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
London-born director Asif Kapadia's second feature, following 2001's critically acclaimed "The Warrior," is a slow, low-key supernatural thriller whose story is too slender to justify its feature-length running time.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Sam Adams
As for Gellar, she seems game but glum, treading water in a role that represses her comic talents and leaves her little to do but suffer in silence.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Sam Adams
As for Gellar, she seems game but glum, treading water in a role that represses her comic talents and leaves her little to do but suffer in silence.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Gregory Kirshling
Mellow -- nay, snoozy -- atmospherics trump actual scares, and it makes almost zero sense.
|
| 40 |
Variety
Forgettable PG-13 pic will particularly strike fans of harder-edged recent horror pix as much ado about not much.
|
| 40 |
Empire
James Dyer
A large step backwards for a promising director and far from the return we'd been hoping for.
|
| 40 |
The Hollywood Reporter
While Adam Sussman's screenplay can be admired for its emphasis on subtle atmospherics rather than cheap scares, it is a gimmicky slog of an affair that lacks narrative coherence or strong focus.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
You may see scarier movies this year, but none so redolent of decomposition.
|
| 38 |
New York Daily News
Since Adam Sussman's script is as lazy as Asif Kapadia's direction is disjointed, nothing ever makes sense, even after the anticlimatic explanation is revealed.
|
| 38 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jason Anderson
Sarah Michelle Gellar is not faring well as a horror-movie scream queen. Gone are the attitude, wit and verve she used to routinely display in the title role of TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
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| 38 |
Boston Globe
As B-level suspensers go, though, The Return isn't actively awful -- just slow and cursed with a lead who acts with her t-shirt.
|
| 30 |
LA Weekly
Luke Y. Thompson
The Return gets this year's award for most misleading poster, with its image of an empty-eyed, gray-skinned zombie/ghost that appears nowhere in the movie. You might, however, feel a little empty-eyed and zombie-like yourself after emerging from this languid story.
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| 30 |
Chicago Reader
Staff (not credited)
A soporific ghost story.
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| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
At the heart of The Return is a murder that even the most bumbling homicide investigator could have solved in about 12 seconds.
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