The Return is a strange little Midwestern horror film starring Buffy and some TV actor. It’s probably the first film I’ve seen that consciously aped M. Night Shyamalan’s style of storytelling, although it’s hampered by the fact that it’s … well, really boring. The interesting thing is that it has all the ingredients: troubled mid-20’s lass with relationship issues, grimy locales with scowling, evasive residents, extreme closeups of people staring, spooky things in the mirror, self-inflicted knife wounds, etc. I mean, I could totally imagine this movie being scary if it had just been injected with a little bit more creativity.
Buffy does her best to keep the energy level up, but the movie wanders a little bit too much during its second act, and everybody just stops paying attention past the first hour. To make sure the audience was still awake, the filmmakers saw fit to throw in a cheap scare every 15 minutes or so; that helped a bit, but it ultimately couldn’t save this cruddy excuse for a ghost horror.