The Return

The "returning to the childhood home" trope has become the bread and butter of the modern indie horror scene. We’ve seen it a thousand times in the A24 era: a protagonist comes home, uncovers a dusty box of Polaroids, and realizes their childhood trauma is literally a monster in the basement. When I sat down to watch BJ Verot’s The Return (2022), I expected another somber meditation on grief, perhaps with a few jump scares involving a creaky floorboard. What I got instead was a curious hybrid—a film that tries to marry the supernatural ghost story with hard science fiction, like The Conjuring crashing head-first into Interstellar on a shoestring budget.

I watched this late on a Tuesday night while trying to ignore a persistent itch on my left ankle that I’m 80% sure was a spider bite, and honestly, that low-level physical anxiety actually paired quite well with the film’s slow-burn dread.

Science Meets the Supernatural

The story follows Rodger Emmerlich (Richard Harmon), a brilliant but clearly troubled college student who heads back to his family estate after his father passes away. He’s joined by his girlfriend Beth (Sara Thompson) and his childhood friend Jordan (Echo Porisky). Rodger isn't just there to mourn; he’s a man of science, and he’s convinced that the "haunting" he experienced as a kid has a rational, mathematical explanation involving ripples in spacetime.

This is where The Return differentiates itself from the pack. Instead of calling a priest, Rodger starts setting up sensors and talking about "applied physics." It’s an ambitious pivot for a film that clearly didn't have a Marvel-sized budget. BJ Verot (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Ken Janssens) does a decent job of making the house feel like a character itself. The cinematography by Brad Crawford leans heavily into those cold, sterile blues and deep shadows that have defined the post-2015 "elevated horror" aesthetic. It looks professional, even if it occasionally feels like it was lit by a single flickering LED bulb found in the back of a Canadian Tire.

A Harmonious Lead

If you’ve watched any genre TV in the last decade, you’ll recognize Richard Harmon from The 100. He has a very specific "exhausted intensity" that works perfectly here. Rodger isn't exactly a likable guy; he’s obsessive and dismissive of the people around him, but Harmon plays him with enough vulnerability that you don't immediately want the ghost to win. He’s supported well by Sara Thompson, who has the thankless task of playing the "skeptical girlfriend" but manages to bring some genuine warmth to the proceedings.

Special mention must go to Marina Stephenson Kerr as Henrietta Cox, the eccentric woman who knows more than she’s letting on. She brings a much-needed gravity to the second act when the plot starts to get a bit tangled in its own scientific jargon. The creature itself, played by Kristen Sawatzky, relies on practical movements and some eerie design choices that reminded me of the "Entity" from It Follows, though it never quite reaches those heights of pure terror.

Why This One Slipped Through the Cracks

Released in the wake of the pandemic, The Return is a classic victim of the "streaming glut." It’s a Canadian production from Strata Studios that likely would have found a cult audience at mid-night festival screenings in a normal year. Instead, it was dropped into the digital ether where indie horror often goes to be forgotten.

Interestingly, the film is actually an expansion of BJ Verot’s 2017 short film Echoes, which won the Best Short award at the Blood in the Snow Film Festival. You can see the short-film DNA in the way the movie lingers on specific atmosphere-building scenes. The leap from short to feature is notoriously difficult, and while The Return struggles with its middle-of-the-road pacing, the ambition is admirable. It tries to explain the "how" of a haunting rather than just the "who," and for a sci-fi nerd like me, that was enough to keep me from reaching for my phone.

The effects are a bit of a mixed bag. When it stays practical, it’s effective. When it leans on CGI to illustrate the scientific "ripples," it looks like a screensaver from a 2004 Dell desktop. But hey, that’s part of the charm of indie horror—seeing where the money ran out and the imagination had to take over.

The Return is a solid, if slightly uneven, entry into the contemporary "trauma-horror" subgenre. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, and it’s certainly not going to be the scariest thing you watch this year, but its attempt to ground supernatural tropes in theoretical physics makes it worth a look for genre completionists. It’s a "quiet night in" kind of movie—best watched when the house is still and you’re in the mood for a ghost story that wants to show you its math homework.

While it lacks the polish of a major studio release, there’s a sincerity to the performances and a genuine creepiness in the creature design that suggests BJ Verot is a director to watch as he continues to bridge the gap between science and scares. If you see it pop up on your streaming dashboard, give it a shot; just don't expect it to explain away all your childhood fears.