Boredom, how do you suggest we define thee?  I know, why don’t we make a movie and call it ‘The Return’ and people upon watching this severe exercise in nothingness will finally understand thine meaning.

            So I’m minding my own business watching the paint dry in my den, whining about being bored and having nothing to do.  Boredom then taps on my shoulder, seriously, just appeared out of nowhere and taps on my shoulder and says;

            ‘You think you’re bored?’ 

            I’m like , ‘Yeah dude, I’m watching paint dry for the love of God.’ 

            Boredom goes ‘You could watch one of these movies you have in a stack over here, you know.’ 

            Of course!  My neglected DVD stack!  Let’s pop in a movie.  I reach for one, but Boredom slaps my hand away and pulls one from behind his back and hands it to me.  I look at the cover and see Sarah Michelle Geller going all brunette on us, not looking cute like Buffy at all and dressed like a lumberjack. 

            “Why in the Hell would I want to watch this?”  I disgustingly ask Boredom.

            “Because I’m sick of your freakin’ WHINING!”  Boredom would then slap me like a bitch, push me down in my chair and load up ‘The Return’.  Every time during this tortuous exercise I would attempt to rise from chair, Boredom would punch me in chest real hard, tell me to sit the f*ck down and shut the f*ck up.  After it was over I would sincerely apologize to Boredom and promise I would never whine about being bored again.  Unmoved, Boredom slapped me like a bitch again and told me:

            “You better the F*CK NOT! Because there’s more where that came from.”

            And as suddenly as he appeared, he disappeared.  I pulled up chair and proceeded to gleefully watch the paint dry in my den.

That one act play was brought to you by the Committee to Keep You From Renting ‘The Return’.  You see I know the Japanese have been doing the whole slow moving horror thing for a while now, with the obvious suspects like ‘Ringu’ and ‘Ju-on’, both of which have been remade American.  Or lesser known ones like Miike’s ‘Audition’ or Kurowsawa’s ‘Séance’.  But those cats obviously know how to do that stuff, we apparently do not.  Because of the time consumed by the rather lame one act play above, we won’t get into a description of ‘The Return’, but we will tell you that it takes a long time to get started.  We might even assume through watching that it never does get started.  We wait, and wait and wait for something, anything to help us explain what we are waiting for or why the character of Joanna Mills is screwed up.  We get an answer, but it’s in the last frames, and it’s completely unsatisfying.

It’s not the Ms. Gellar is a bad actress, but she’s pretty much required to act this thing out like she’s on a double dose of valium, except when she’s required to run from, well, no one who happens to be chasing her.  As far as her co-stars are concerned, Sam Shepherd makes a glorified cameo as her father, and though I’m sure Sam’s gotta eat, he was totally wasted in the role and they could have saved that loot and got any old middle aged white dude play that part.  Hell, they could have stuck Nick Cannon in the part as it was so inconsequential, you hardly would have noticed that Joanna Mills Dad was a 22 year old black guy.  Adam Scott also pops in as Joanna’s work mate who is really desperate to rape her.  I mean really.  I mean Buffy’s character is a salesperson working out of St. Louis and is on a sales call to Texas and this guy follows her all the way there just so he can try to rape her.  And gets his ass kicked by the other supporting character of Terry (Peter O’Brien) who is also enrolled in the acting through valium method for this film. 

I’m done here folks.  It’s boring, boring, boring.  It’s one of the slowest moving, weakest payoff experiences I’ve seen.  View at your own risk, and certainly don’t watch it while driving or operating heavy equipment.