Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sometimes they come back

What happens if you don’t finish what you were meant to do on Earth? Sarah Michelle Gellar tackles this question in her new movie The Return.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in yet another supernatural thriller? Not again, you might say. According to the production notes of the Asif Kapadia film The Return, it was Gellar who was interested in the script and wanted to take on the role of Joanna Mills. And just why would she want another role that will ultimately pigeonhole her?

Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a woman who sometimes sees someone else’s reflection in the mirror in The Return. Well, maybe because The Return offers something different. The film is described as a terrifying story about being haunted. The haunting is set in motion in a unique manner; and neatly tucked into the tale is a story about a woman on a journey of self-discovery. The Return also stars Sam Shepard and Aussie Peter O’Brien who is making his American film debut.

Producer Aaron Ryder theorised on Gellar’s involvement: “In The Return, (her fans) will be excited to see her really flexing her acting muscles. She’s playing a role that you haven’t seen her do before, and you’ll be seeing her in a different way. I think the complexities and seriousness of Joanna attracted her.”

The Return revolves around Joanna Mills, a restless 25-year-old who never stays in the same spot. Since her job as a sale representative takes her from one place to another, it seems like a sweet deal despite the fact that it leaves her personal life in shambles. Then she arrives at La Salle, Texas, and she may as well have entered the Twilight Zone.

Joanna starts seeing a reflection that isn’t hers and seeing people who aren’t there and, worse still, one of them wants to kill her.

Gellar said in a recorded interview: “She starts to have memories and feelings about a place she’s never been.”

Unfortunately for Joanna, these aren’t good memories or feelings - she sees and feels the brutal murder of a young woman she’s never met. Convinced she’s not hallucinating, Joanna is determined to find out why this is happening to her.

Screenwriter Adam Sussman explained the idea behind the story: “(I) wanted to write something about the dead reconnecting with the living. Nothing was really clicking until I came across scientifically documented cases of very young children who had spontaneous memories of things and people and places that they could never possibly have known about. After doing more research and reading about the memories and stories that these children were accessing, I found that usually there was violence involved; a life had been cut short - and there was a reason for ‘the return.’”

According to co-producer Jeffrey Silver, the appeal behind the script was the simplicity of it all, and thus the audience sees the story unfolding in a visual format than through the conventional conversation style. This idea sat very well with director Kapadia who wanted to generate the dramatic tension with presentation and imagery. Ridding everything excessive and focusing on just the essence of the story, Kapadia kept pushing the boundaries with each scene.

Londoner Kapadia said: “My aim with The Return was to create an unsettling atmosphere, scare people, but in a way that they don’t always know why they are feeling that way.”

Or as Silver explained: “This story is told with a serene surface point of view - but you’ll expect the worst to happen at any moment. That expectation permeates the landscapes in the movie.”

Actor Adam Scott - who plays Joanna’s ex-boyfriend - said the look of the film, which is set in rural United States, is very much like the 1970s character-based drama. He said, “The film has to do with real people - it is outlandish and high-concept; then the supernatural element creeps in. It is an interesting mixture.”

Another interesting addition is the spiritual element weaved into the story.

Kapadia said, “Different people - in different religions - have been brought up with the concept that people might die and come back in another life in another form. The point of view of The Return is that people are on some sort of path and that we’re not all separate beings. Somehow, there’s a force out there that links things up. You can try to come back to correct something that happened to you in another life.”

Gellar was equally fascinated with the underlying theme found in the story about life being cyclical. She said, “You come and live your life and then you come back and fix the things from the past. The Return is about how you need to finish your life before you can truly transcend to what is essentially the next life - and what happens if you don’t finish what you were meant to do on Earth. If emotions carry over, what happens?”

No matter how you colour your canvas, at the heart of The Return is a story about a girl. Gellar surmised, “One of the things that I particularly liked about Joanna was that she speaks so well for everybody - young girls, middle-aged women - who understand what it’s like to not belong. She feels that she never did belong, that her place was never her own and then finds out that these feelings are true. She takes action to find her identity and find where her place is.”