The Gift is a genuinely creepy thriller from Sam Raimi, he of the Evil Dead series and the even scarier For Love of the Game. It's the kind of movie that What Lies Beneath wanted to be, a marvelous marriage of shock gimmicks from slasher flicks with actual plot, characters, and acting. Sitting here afterwards, picking it apart, I can see that it's predictable and falls into the clichés of thrillers -- in fact, I can see how someone could make the same complaints about it that I made about What Lies Beneath -- but you either buy it or you don't. And I fell for it.
The movie wouldn't hold up without Cate Blanchett's superb performance as Annie, a widowed psychic in a small Louisiana town who's half psychologist, half social worker to her clients but doesn't have the same insight or empathy when it comes to her own family. Blanchett's face expresses empathy with a painful eloquence Bill Clinton can only dream of, and she shifts from confident and strong to childishly vulnerable in an instant. She's in nearly every frame of the movie, and she carries it off beautifully.
The supporting cast is strong and surprising. Keanu "I never met a role I couldn't ruin" Reeves is amazingly effective as a brutish redneck, though Hilary Swank as his abused wife is little more than a pair of spandex pants and a horrifyingly out-of-control mullet. Giovanni Ribisi goes hog-wild as a psychotic who's really kinda sweet, in a violent way; though he overdoes it, he's got some good moments, and lord knows anything is better than his performance in The Other Sister. Greg Kinnear is more charming and better-looking than any high-school principal on this planet; he does a terrific job of layering his usual charismatic flirtation with a tragic undercurrent.
Raimi's got a good sense of movie-making and has a well-written story (scripted by Billy Bob Thornton, who clearly should stick to writing rather than directing) to work with. He opens with an ethereally beautiful cypress swamp, just eerie enough to unsettle you a bit. The camerawork has the same jumpy energy as his Evil Dead films, but without the gimmicks. Raimi does a marvelous job of creating a creepy mood with very subtle cues; that's partly how I got so caught up in the film that I'm willing to overlook its flaws. It would have been even more effective if the dumb bitch sitting next to me had shut her mouth for a single goddamn minute. I have never wanted to hurt someone as much as I wanted to hurt this woman. She reacted to literally every single move every single character made -- even if they were just turning around or opening a door -- with a loud gasp, an "oh no," or "here it comes." And she had the gall, when someone else in the theater loudly moaned, "Uh oh," to say, "Shut up!"
I'm sorry; I didn't mean to go off like that. But I literally had to hold my elbow against my body because I thought I was going to sort-of-accidentally let it fly and hit her. I can't remember the last time someone infuriated me as much as this woman did (well, since my boss quit last week). Unfortunately, when the film jumped off the sprockets and we had to wait several minutes for them to fix it, a sort of Jerry Springer atmosphere was unleashed in the audience, so that once the film started again, people were hooting and making loud comments throughout the rest of the movie, completely destroying any mood that had been created. I mean, you want to whisper a smart-ass remark to your neighbor during a tense, emotional scene, fine -- but what makes you think the rest of the audience wants to hear you shout it? The film deals with some very heavy subjects, including child molestation and wife beating, and let me tell you, it was appalling listening to this audience's reaction to some of these issues.
Okay, happy place, happy place. Anyway, the movie's ending is predictable, exactly the "twist" you suspect from the beginning, but the cast sells it. Like I said, you either buy it or you don't, and I did, despite the best efforts of Regal Cinemas and my fellow moviegoers to test the limits of my patience. I heard some people as I was walking out complain that it sucked, but clearly these people were idiots, as evidenced by their behavior during the movie.
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