The defence The Arthouse Gremlin
“Its refusal to behave is the point.”
The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.
Back to trending 
The Return
Horror · Science Fiction · 2020
After the death of his father, a brilliant college student returns to his family home where he learns that the horrors from his childhood aren't as dead and gone as he once thought.
Movie details
The Return
“Childhood horrors can kill.”
2020 Horror · Science Fiction 1h 30m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
4.6 / 10
993 votes
TMDB
6.7 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
After the death of his father, a brilliant college student returns to his family home where he learns that the horrors from his childhood aren't as dead and gone as he once thought.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over The Return?
For the defence
The Arthouse Gremlin
“The stranger, the better.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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A journey into uncharted and forbidden territory through three tales tangled in space and time.
Margaux
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As a group of seniors celebrate their final college days at a smart house, the house's highly advanced AI system, Margaux, begins to take on a deadly presence of her own. A carefree weekend of partying turns into a dystopian nightmare as they realize Margaux's plans to eliminate her tenants one way or another. Time begins to run out as the group desperately tries to survive and outsmart the smart home.
Year 10
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After the fall of civilization, the few survivors have been driven to cannibalism. A young man must confront a violent tribe that has murdered his father and stolen the medicine that keeps his girlfriend alive.
The Inhabitant
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Like any other teenage girl, Tara is just surviving high school — yet her father and mother seem strangely distant. Amidst a nearby spree of gruesome ax murders, Tara has sightings of terrifying entities, forcing her to question her own sanity and shocking ancestry.
Die Alone
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Lost in a world reclaimed by nature and overrun by mysterious creatures, Ethan, a young man with amnesia navigates the dangerous landscape in search of his lost love Emma. His journey takes an unexpected turn when he encounters Mae, a hardened and eccentric survivor. Together, Ethan and Mae face threats both human and otherwise before a fateful encounter with Kai unravels a secret that lies just beyond Ethan's fractured memory.
Dark Light
Horror · 2019
A woman returns to her family home and discovers it to be inhabited by monsters.
The Resurrected
Horror · 1991
Charles Dexter Ward, a wealthy scientist, uses an ancient diary and human remains to begin a terrifying and bloody pursuit for immortality.
Double Blind
Horror · 2024
After an experimental drug trial goes awry, the test subjects face a terrifying side effect: if you fall asleep you die. Trapped in an isolated facility, panic ensues as they try to escape and somehow stay awake.
Southbound
Fantasy · 2015
The film contains five stories set on desolate stretches of a desert highway. Two men on the run from their past, a band on its way to a gig, a man struggling to get home, a brother in search of his long-lost sister and a family on vacation are forced to confront their worst fears and darkest secrets in these interwoven tales.
Where it lives
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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.
Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
BJ Verot
Written by
Ken Janssens · BJ Verot
Richard Harmon
Rodger Emmerlich
Sara Thompson
Beth Struman
Marina Stephenson Kerr
Henrietta Cox
Kristen Sawatzky
Entity
Erik Athavale
Oswald Emmerlich
Echo Porisky
Jordan Hasbury
Callie Lane
Teen Jordan
Court is in session
Put The Return on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“Oddness is not depth.”
A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.