Sandwiched between his earlier, gonzoid classics and his later, bigger budgeted, superhero phase, Sam Raimi had, what could be called his “sensible period”. Easing back on his affinity for vicious slapstick, cartoon physics and the desire to hurl his camera around like a thing literally possessed, the director attempted to make a string of dramas and thrillers that didn’t rely once on suddenly employing a crash zoom to suddenly stop three inches from an actor’s nose and while this was something of a noble endeavor, the results tended to vary.
The Fargo-esque A Simple Plan was fantastic, but on the other hand his Kevin Costner Baseball drama, For The Love Of The Game, made me yearn for the Raimi of old – however, before the director used his patented visuals to help the comic book movie explode with Spider-Man, we had The Gift.
Widow Annie Wilson is trying to raise her three boys and make ends meet thanks to a peculiar gift she seemingly has which allows her to act as a fortune teller to the more receptive (or desperate) townsfolk of Brixton Georgia. However, the potent mixture of a sixth sense and a big heart means that her clientele usually brings in the sort of trouble a single mother of three would prefer not to have to deal with.
Mentally ill mechanic Buddy Cole has past trauma that’s obviously fuelling his troubled behavior and hopes Annie can unlock the garbled riddles his addled memory is telling him about a blue diamond. Elsewhere, Annie is trying to aid Valerie Barksdale, a beaten wife who is desperately seeking answers, but stubbonly won’t leave her brutish husband, Donnie, who doesn’t take kindly to the interference of a clairvoyant in his business.
However, while Annie attempts to weather Donnie’s hate campaign against her, she meets charming school principal Wayne Collins who is due to marry Jessica King, the flirty daughter of a local bigwig, but it doesn’t take someone with extra sensory perception to clock that she has a wandering eye.
Things soon take a sinister turn when Jessica turns up missing one night and after being approached by Jessica’s father (and a very sceptical police chief), Annie later has a vision of the girl, plainly dead as she floats in the sky. The vision eventually leads to the property of Donnie Barksdale where Jessica’s body is soon dredged from his lake and it seems that is that, but Annie remains convinced that things might not be so simple.
Collins is eager to get to the bottom of this tragic mystery, but before Annie can figure this thing out, Buddy’s repressed trauma and and a particularly stressful court case have to be resolved first.
Co-written by Billy Bob Thornton before he made Sling Blade and apparently based upon his grandmother, The Gift comes absolutely loaded with about as much Southern gothic as it has star power and yet despite its impressive credentials, it’s a movie that seemingly has sunk without a trace. It’s not everyday a film is released that boasts Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, Hillary Swank, JK Simmonds, Giovanni Ribisi and Katie Holmes padding out its cast, but back in the year 2000 no one seemed to bat much of an eyelid.
It’s a shame, because while The Gift admittedly has its issues, it’s quite the little goldmine of interesting performances from a group of actors firing on multiple cylinders. Head of the table is, of course, Blanchett, who delivers an amazingly restrained performance as a woman deeply wounded by her bereavement, but is also quietly tough as iron as she gives herself to a town who frankly doesn’t fucking deserve her. Desperate to remain unseen and yet genetically unable to not act on the things she sees, the actress radiates white trash saint hood while you silently will her to catch a break, but the fact that this is a Raimi film means that she’s going to be mercilessly put through the wringer. Also proving to be high intriguing is the fact that Keanu Reeves, aka. Hollywood’s most endearing dude, has turned up willing to play the biggest piece of shit he can as he threatens, abuses and casually assaults our leading lady seemingly at the drop of a hat and Swank is nicely infuriating as his downtrodden and hideously naive wife. The remainder of the cast sees some familiar faces do what they do best with Kinnear playing absurdly nice, Simmons playing irritable and dismissive and Ribisi going full tilt crazy amid a whirlwind of ticks and stammers and it’s quite nice to see a movie cast entirely by character actors who blend into their roles with ease.
However, when we turn or attention to both Raimi and Thorton, the cracks unfortunately start to show and while the directing is polished and atmospheric, Raimi seems to be missing a certain something that made A Simple Plan so heartbreakingly gripping – a taunt script. It’s not that Thornton has penned something particularly bad as the flick is packed with vivid people and lots of little details that shows a sizable chunk of this was probably lifted from his own youth, but it was going to need a little more urgency if it ever was going to be reguarded as a white trash Sixth Sense. The movie stubbonly refuses to move faster than a plod and while I wasn’t expecting car chases and fist fights, you’d think that a murder mystery with supernatural undertones would have some sense of urgency. Elsewhere, the supernatural and the whodunit vibes don’t truly click and worse yet, if you can’t work out the twist of the film about twenty minutes in, then it’s because you might be on your phone or something because its overwhelmingly obvious. Making matters progressively uneven is a final twist on a twist that simply doesn’t land right and goes against the rather subtle nature of the plot thus far, but that doesn’t mean that The Gift doesn’t dole out some presents.
Every now and then, the movie drops a scene that scores hard with the sickening moment Buddy reveals exactly what his obsession with this blue diamond actually is and some of Raimi’s old tricks come out to play during Annie’s visions and we even get the odd welcome crash zoom every now and then.
Apart from that, Raimi enthusiasts (like myself) may enjoy spotting some of the directors signature quirks dotted about the place, be it a cameo from the fabled Delta automobile to the fact that Raimi has no qualms treating Cate Blanchett just as badly as he does Bruce Campbell with her absorbing a surprisingly large amount of punishment.
Somewhat forgettable and simply not thrilling or scary enough when compared to other supernatural thrillers of the time, The Gift is nevertheless a decent find to stumble across primarily thanks to its boffo cast. However, as much Raimi should be applauded for reigning in his quirks for the sake of its story, I was somewhat relieved when Spider-Man managed to ensnare him in his web…
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