This movie is probably the most accurate depiction of a sociopath ever created on the big screen.
Miranda Wells, ingeniously depicted by the famous "Gone Girl" star Rosamund Pike, a nurse in a local hospital, who is a bit odd, but an all around nice person, gets horribly raped by a no good small time criminal William Finn. But, surprisingly enough, instead of hating on Finn, Miranda visits him in prison, and even hires him to fix her porch... then she drugs him, locks him in her basement, tortures him and probably kills him, revealing previously to that that she have let her mother die, and that she enjoys hospital work because it allows her to inflict pain on patients while treating them (much in a fashion of a dentist in "The Little Shop of Horrors" musical).
Miranda Wells is probably the most accurate depiction of a sociopath ever created on film. Her Oscar-worthy acting in Return to Sender very well answers the question of why people almost never suspect a sociopath serial killer until the body count goes up way too high. With no offense to Anthony Hopkins performance in the series about the psychologist gone murderer, real psychopathic serial killers rarely act like Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs in real life - they are much more likely to look like Miranda: likable, charming, a bit odd, but nothing more.
The movie portrays all these qualities in a very subtle, very cinematic fashion, which works very well: it allows the viewer to profile Miranda, like a detective, which makes "Return to Sender" that much more great of a thriller. We know something is coming, but we would never see it. This is why sociopaths are so dangerous, and "Return to Sender" does a grade A job at explaining it.
Miranda Wells, ingeniously depicted by the famous "Gone Girl" star Rosamund Pike, a nurse in a local hospital, who is a bit odd, but an all around nice person, gets horribly raped by a no good small time criminal William Finn. But, surprisingly enough, instead of hating on Finn, Miranda visits him in prison, and even hires him to fix her porch... then she drugs him, locks him in her basement, tortures him and probably kills him, revealing previously to that that she have let her mother die, and that she enjoys hospital work because it allows her to inflict pain on patients while treating them (much in a fashion of a dentist in "The Little Shop of Horrors" musical).
Miranda Wells is probably the most accurate depiction of a sociopath ever created on film. Her Oscar-worthy acting in Return to Sender very well answers the question of why people almost never suspect a sociopath serial killer until the body count goes up way too high. With no offense to Anthony Hopkins performance in the series about the psychologist gone murderer, real psychopathic serial killers rarely act like Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs in real life - they are much more likely to look like Miranda: likable, charming, a bit odd, but nothing more.
The movie portrays all these qualities in a very subtle, very cinematic fashion, which works very well: it allows the viewer to profile Miranda, like a detective, which makes "Return to Sender" that much more great of a thriller. We know something is coming, but we would never see it. This is why sociopaths are so dangerous, and "Return to Sender" does a grade A job at explaining it.