The Gift

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

Swamps, John Deere hats, and fiddle music are red flags that signal you’re in for some scary shit. Whether it’s going to involve chainsaws, squealing like pigs, or line-dancing, movies have taught us that the deep South is a truly frightening place. Sam “Evil Dead” Raimi feeds this stereotype with The Gift, a suitably creepy film that takes a whodunit premise and shoots it like a horror movie. The resulting film, despite not always working quite the way it was obviously intended to, delivers solid entertainment and more than a few jolts.

Cate Blanchett stars as Annie Wilson, a psychic who gives readings for the residents of a small Southern town. Among her clients are an abused wife (Hilary Swank, looking like a Lynyrd Skynyrd groupie) and a mentally deficient and possibly dangerous auto mechanic, played by Giovanni Ribisi. (Quick, Giovanni, play a troubled genius soon; you’re becoming to retarded hicks what Joe Pesci is to mobsters.) When a local debutante (Katie Holmes) is murdered, everyone from the girl’s mourning fiancé (Greg Kinnear) to the local sheriff (Oz’s resident Nazi, J.K. Simmons) to the aforementioned abusive husband (a ridiculous and miscast Keanu Reeves) come to Annie for answers. It’s nice to see Dawson’s Creek star Holmes make a bid for respectability as an actress (meaning she takes her shirt off and says “fuck”). But the real draw of the movie, apart from stylish camerawork and a chilling soundtrack, is Blanchett; escaping the confines of corsets, she delivers a great lead performance that really draws you in. Just keep an eye out for the creepy-ass fiddle player in the swamp, and consider yourself warned.

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