Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The Gift opens this weekend, which is a new thriller in which Joel Edgerton harasses Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall in a Fatal Attraction kind of way. I’d say I’m hoping there are no dead rabbits in this one, but let’s be honest: I’m not watching The Gift. Why? Because there’s already one great movie called The Gift, and it’s definitely not this one.
Back in 2000, and right before he took on the first Spider-Man franchise, director Sam Raimi helmed a Southern gothic thriller on a tiny budget. The most impressive feat, of course, was its stellar cast. The Gift featured Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, Greg Kinnear, Giovani Ribisi, Katie Holmes, and recent Oscar winner Hilary Swank — not to mention a script co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, who modeled the protagonist on his own mother.
Blanchett stars as a small-town Georgia psychic named Annie, who’s a favorite among the locals who need spiritual guidance — especially the beleaguered wife (played by Swank, sporting an intense mullet) of an abusive redneck (a surprisingly great Reeves). Annie repeatedly has visions, however, of a ghostly presence in a local swamp, and when the high-class fiancée (Holmes) of a beloved schoolteacher (Kinnear) goes missing, she’s certain the specter in her dream is of the missing woman.
While it didn’t earn the mass appeal of Raimi’s early blood-spattered epics in the Evil Dead franchise — or even the critical praise that A Simple Plan, his Coen Brothers-ish thriller that also starred Billy Bob Thornton, did — The Gift certainly rests in the genre that also includes True Detective (although with a spiritual twist) and American Horror Story (but without the gore).
Plus, Katie Holmes is topless in it, if that’s your thing. (Admit it: it is.)
