Metacritic reviews

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.

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.

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.

You may see scarier movies this year, but none so redolent of decomposition.

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.

A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.

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.

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.

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.

A soporific ghost story.