Customer Reviews

Return in Red

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

RETURN IN RED is no less than a find. Its title may intrigue, but the packaging (borrowing from 28 DAYS LATER) is generic and for lack of marketing budget we know nothing of the movie. It's 'small', it's Americana, it's paranoia and, most of all, it starts very slow. But it has GREAT atmosphere, the - for the most part - amateur acting is not bad, actually quite fitting, and the basic assumption, however simplistic, is convincing enough.
A great little movie that deserves better than the minimal festival attention it has gathered.

Some people claim that this film is too long for what it is. I disagree. If it was any shorter, it would've felt like the director got impatient with his own film. Fast paced films on a low budget don't work. I loved this movie for it's sheer creepiness. There's no explanation for the eerie van, nor it's intentions, which is fine by me. Movies that try to explain themselves are usually mindless bores (Re: Thirteen Ghosts, Amityville remake)that make you disappointed with the film as a whole.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. No-name actors set the reality mark of not knowing whats going to happen. Low budget gives the film its small time mood with a big time story. The pacing is the icing on the cake, just enough build-up to make for a satisfying ending.

I have only one complaint about this movie: 1:33!!! I hate fullscreen! But it was still enjoyable. Just would've been better in widescreen. All in all, if you prepare yourself for a non-big budget extravaganza, and go into this knowing that this a low budget film, you should be satisfied. Not the greatest indie film ever made, but fun to watch.

- Jascha Nipper

If you have the chance, see this movie.
It definitely is a low budget film, but it has all the things I look for in a "Bad" Good Movie!
Not bad like "Plan 9", but bad like what made "Night of the Living Dead" great.

I loved the style of filming and yes it felt cheap, but it has that cheap that makes you know they worked hardcore on making it.
The story is pretty good and kept me watching even though it felt long.

Though the film was long, its story kept me watching and wondering about the plot.
For that I must give credit!

The acting was fairly good for such a indie film and style/scenery made me feel I was in this small town in southern Ohio.

Good film!
Worth the watch!
Worth The 58 cent DVD purchase!
Watch it on Netflix and give it a shot!

I originally watched this via Netflix figuring it was just gonna be another B-movie, but I was happily surprised to find a very enjoyable film. These guys were actually trying to make a good movie and I think they did great job.

I'm not usually a fan of slow pacing, but it works in this film by allowing enough time to establish the setting and what is normal. Once you know normal the strange that comes later has greater impact.

Most horror movies today are terribly predictable, but this one has some truly unexpected turns and one scene in particular creeped me the heck out. Authentic rural characters and location. Excellent at developing mood.

Return in Red is terrific. The director has a talent for building a sense of paranoid fear out of minimal elements (I never thought I could be frightened by the appearance of orange traffic symbols), and his small-town characters are created with affection and detail. If you can accept the slow pace and non-Hollywood style of acting, you might find yourself swallowed up in the nightmare world that the film evokes. Well worth watching.

When I read the box at the video store, I thought this sounded like a great idea. Now, however, I wish I had rented just about anything else in the store - this was easily the most boring movie I have seen in the last 5 years, no kidding. The premise is good: a government experiment on residents of a small town, utilizing sound waves on individuals to see the effects of madness and excessive violence. The idea made me think of an older movie called Warning Signs which was actually a decent low budget film with Sam Waterston and Yaphet Kotto about government conspiracies and people going insane and becoming violent. But the problem with Return in Red, as some of the other reviews have already stated, was that there was WAAAAAY too much build-up. This 100+ minute movie had too many un-necessary scenes and superfluous characters that added nothing to the story. They could have made this into a 45 minute short film and it still would have been too long. I don't think the director, Tyler Tharpe, has any sense at all of pacing or how to edit his work so that the story moves forward without completely boring the viewer.
The bottom line: promising idea but awful execution.
Do not under any circumstances waste any time or money on this movie. If you like the story concept, rent Warning Signs instead.

Midwest filmmaker Tyler Tharpe's FREAK set itself apart from other psycho flicks partially through its tangible rural atmosphere, and the same quality informs his new RETURN IN RED (Image). Tharpe's use of recurring visual motifs also helps evoke a sense of small-town life whose daily rhythms are thrown off when a covert government sound-wave experiment causes the residents to violently harm themselves and each other. The gritty 16mm lensing and marvelously moody lighting by IN THE COMPANY OF MEN's Tony Hettinger (replicated quite well in the full screen transfer) helps fuel the movie's slow-burning tension; more restless viewers may fins the pace too slow, but patience is rewarded with well-sustained suspense sequences and startling bursts of mayhem. And at 102 minutes, the release cut bears better pacing than the initially circulated 116-minute version.

Paranoia will haunt you for a while after watching this one. Very tense and scary. And some good effects, too. Woth the watch time.

This is terrible, I had to fast forward through the first 50 minutes and then continue to fast forward until the very end. The ending was even worse. There was nothing scary about this movie. Don't bother even watching it's terrible and drawn out.

Return in Red is not just a "fun Concept" movie. It tells the story that just like in our American reality, the American government subjects it's public like lab rats to the low frequencies ranges that can and do control the frontal lobes of your brain causing one to see and feel what the government programmer wants you to see and feel. This technology was used in France for protest control. A van would pull up to the protesting crowd open its back doors and expose the public to low frequencies that would make the crowd get sick and dizzy. The modern day EMF low frequency towers can be seen every where now a days. See all those cell phone towers that are going up a dime a dozen ever since the 9/11 attacks? There every where. Even disguised as massive flag poles and on church property they are disguised as massive crosses. There's even a u.s. government patent with a certified patent number on this mind controlling technology that was created to control the masses. Kudos for this movie trying to expose this domestic terrorism done to us by the dark fractions of the U.S. Government. In Canada many are aware and are protesting on this subject because the Governments there are like here and they are placing these EMF towers right by schools and shopping malls. The citizens are aware of the affects including cancer. Back to the movie....yes, the movie slow, dark and moody and has the feel of a 70's b movie, but for me the message is clear and it's a bit sad knowing that the majority of the U.S. public arnt aware of this subject and will only see this as a "fun Concept" thats just a movie.