Return to Sender (2015) Reviews

• A slow burner that never ignites.

  Sleepin_Dragon2015-10-14

  Miranda Wells, a beautiful young Nurse from a small town is invited on a blind date with a tall, dark and handsome chap 'Kevin.' Miranda has definite issues with pens and a few other quirks. When a guy turns up to meet her, she assumes he's Kevin, but events go tragically wrong, later the real Kevin turns up. There are some definite pacing issues, it is so slow in parts, dare I say it becomes a little boring. Some scenes are so slow and overdone this movie could be edited and shown in less then an hour. The movie itself is quite hard to follow, there are times when I didn't know what was going on. It's a little telegraphed at times, you kinda know what she's all about. Definitely issues with her dad's dog, but why did she do what she did, I appreciate it was a pretty dress, she never forgave it for that. I think that showed us her capacity for slow and definite revenge. I love Rosamund Pike, she showed in Gone Girl just how good she is, but here she's just a bit flat and makes Miranda uninteresting, thank goodness for Nick Nolte, he added a bit of spirit and warmth to the film that was otherwise lacking. When she performs a tracheotomy in the restaurant she got a round of applause? Would that truly happen? I can't make out if I thought the ending was good or terrible, it was certainly a switch in tempo. How many hairstyles did she have in this film? Every scene she looked like she'd been re-styled. Considering the matter this film deals with I would have thought it would have left me sad or angry, but it left me a bit cold. Some good elements, just a bit of a let down. 5/10

  More

• Return to Writer and Director

  MilkWithHoney2015-11-09

  How they managed to get well known actors in this ill-fated plot of a movie is beyond me. Maybe they pulled a classic bait and switch and presented one script to get people on board and then filmed an alternate script during production, either way this is what you would call a disappointment to be polite. Now let's start with the PLOT, the whole premise for the movie was a great idea, loved it from the synopsis, the execution of the plot was discerning. After the inciting incident the whole plot takes a disastrous tumble. You will fail to realize the objective of the film by the end. Not only that the credits couldn't roll fast enough for me and I was so happy that I didn't pay $14 to see this in the cinema. CHARACTERS: Funny enough, you may just end up rooting for the villain, that's how recklessly this film's plot us put together. I found myself with no compassion for our main character. I did however, feel bad for Nick Nolte, because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how his agent tricked him into this. I gave this two stars. One for putting a budget together to get the film done and the other for getting decent stars to somehow film this.

  More

• Just a messy bore-fest, with Rosamund Pike

  stephendaxter2015-05-28

  Return to Sender is a thriller starring Rosamund Pike fresh off her role in Gone Girl which earned her an Oscar nomination. Now although she didn't put in a bad performance in this film, she wont be getting any nominations for this. The plot of this movie was just a complete mess, it kind of had a purpose for the first 15 minutes and looked like it could be a promising film but for the entire rest of the film i had no idea what was happening or why it was happening. Everything about the film just felt very weird and you couldn't like Rosamund Pike's character because of the ridiculously dumb decisions she makes for reasons that you don't understand. Just thinking back on the film there was zero character development for anyone at all for the majority of the film, it is just a series of events that seem to happen then the film moves on to another irrelevant scene and it keeps on doing this until you are bored out of your mind. The film also decides to take a very odd turn in the last act just out of nowhere. All of a sudden the film decides to throw a curveball with absolutely no setup and no foreshadowing that it just seems very out of character. The terrible writing of the plot and characters really let the film down, you cannot get behind any of the characters and everything just seems ridiculous. In the end The directing wasn't bad and was shot pretty well and Rosamund Pike did her best to use her acting talents to try and save the film but it just wasn't enough to save this messy bore-fest. - 3.9

  More

• Puzzling "Therapy" for Rape Victims

  3xHCCH2015-06-19

  Miranda (Rosamund Pike) is a nurse who's got it all it seems -- her own nice house, a loving supportive Dad (Nick Nolte), a stable career about to go the next level. One day, a lecherous stranger William (Shiloh Fernandez) gains access into her house and rapes her. As her neat little world comes crumbling down around her, Miranda embarks on a novel form of "therapy", in the hope of recovering from the brutal trauma she suffered. A rapist is not only a sexual assaulter, but also the ultimate bully and power-tripper. A rape victim is violated not only sexually and physically, but also psychologically, mentally and even spiritually. What may be a few minutes of torture will haunt a victim for a lifetime. Powerfully rich in dramatic pain and torment, rape and its aftermath had been the topic of thousands of films and TV shows. Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950) and Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring" (1960) are both Oscar-winning classics of World Cinema. "Johnny Belinda" (1948) and"The Accused" (1988) have won Best Actress Oscars for Jane Wyman and Jodie Foster respectively. But no, before you expect too much, this film definitely does not have Oscars in its future. Lead star Rosamund Pike shot "Return to Sender" BEFORE her Oscar- nominated turn in "Gone Girl". There is a lot of her "Gone Girl" performance here as well -- the subtle mysterious boiling under her cool-as-ice exterior. The strange script makes her do a lot of illogically unexpected, supposedly therapeutic activities, and Pike does them with her game face straight on. Seeing her make these puzzling decisions, we are as frustrated as her father Mitchell was in the film. Shiloh Fernandez was clearly up to no good the moment we see him on screen. He has got a raw roguish look about him that makes him work as this vile character. Nick Nolte is now all grandfatherly and Santa Claus-like with his white beard and body heft, playing MIranda's father Mitchell. This is so unlike how I last remember him during his prime in the 1990s in film like "Cape Fear" or "The Prince of Tides." Watching "Return to Sender" felt like watching three different short films which were just tenuously connected to each other. The final act was so predictable yet still so maddening because it never really showed us clearly what happened. We will be expected to interpret the scene in our own way. I am sure those who have invested time to follow the movie to this point may not exactly relish this disappointing ending. 4/10.

  More

• A strange experience

  jtindahouse2016-08-10

  I'm sitting here having watched 'Return to Sender' and I genuinely don't know what to think. I'm not even sure whether I enjoyed it or not. I could justify giving it a '3' and I could equally justify giving it a '9'. It's my kind of movie first of all. I love the 'revenge' genre. This is an odd case of that genre though. In fact I wasn't even sure it was that type of movie until 4/5 of the way through, despite the movie poster heavily implying it. It's not a particularly well made movie, at least technically. The sound engineering is poorly done in certain scenes. Every scene involving the prison phones is incredibly hard to hear the dialogue in. It chops in and out and is often inaudible. The story is choppy and alienates the audience at times by leaving them clueless as to what the point of this all is. And yet through all this, I was having a pretty good time watching it (I think). Rosamund Pike is a very fine actress and has the chops to carry a movie (as she proved in 'Gone Girl'). She's again pretty good here, and with a stronger script could have accomplished a performance on par with her one in 'Gone Girl' (the two roles are actually strikingly similar). It's hard to explain exactly what an odd experience 'Return to Sender' is to someone who hasn't seen it. Would I recommend this film for someone to watch? I'm still not entirely sure. The only thing I can say is watch it to see what I mean.

  More