The Gift

Sam Raimi, who made his rep with comic book horror movies like “The Evil Dead” and “Darkman” before moving on to more mainstream fare such as “A Simple Plan,” throws a bit of both at you in the Southern Gothic thriller “The Gift.” Part whodunit, part paranormal thriller, “The Gift” handles both genres with reasonable skill. While some may not have much difficulty in pinpointing the culprit, the picture pays at least as much attention to the moods and tones of its small town as it does to its murder mystery. Cate Blanchett plays Annie Wilson, a widow in one of those backwater Appalachian towns which doesn’t seem too interested in keeping up with modern times. Struggling since her husband’s death to raise three sons, Annie earns a little money (or rather, she receives “donations,” so as to avoid running afoul of the law) by doing psychic readings for the townspeople. Annie’s “gift” gives her premonitions of the future, and helps her to see the turmoil inside her clients. In that sense it is also a curse, for she must be party to their pain and anguish. Annie is part psychic, part psychiatrist. One of her clients is Valerie Barksdale (Swank) who is beaten regularly by her husband Donnie (Reeves, who plays very well against type as a frightening redneck).

Annie keeps telling Valerie to leave her husband (which is more common sense than psychic intuition), and Donnie doesn’t much cotton to this sort of advice. He thinks Annie is a witch anyway, and threatens her repeatedly, at one point assaulting her in full view of her sons. Donnie’s looming threat hangs over Annie for the first half of the picture. Then, when Jessica King (Holmes), the town flirt, goes missing, Annie has frightening visions of her fate. Eventually the sheriff, along with Jessica’s father, and her fiancé Wayne (Kinnear, in his usual nice guy role), come to Annie to see if she can help them figure out what happened to Jessica. Annie does help them locate Jessica’s body, but even after the apparent murderer is put away, Annie is not at peace. She still feels that the truth has not been discovered, and she still feels at risk. When she tells her son “everything’s going to be all right now,” everyone in the audience knows that it’s not. Cate Blanchett gives a fine, well-modulated performance as Annie. Her movements as she reads her cards are precise, measured, and in her face we can see the conflict as she is torn between what she sees and what she can do to help.

Despite her gift, all is not clear to her, and she is haunted always by her failure to foresee the explosion that killed her husband. Giovanni Ribisi is on hand as Buddy Cole, a young man tormented by his own visions of the past, a borderline psychotic fellow who counts Annie as his only friend. Ribisi, always a convincing actor, handles the role as well as anyone, but he is probably amped up about ten percent too much, so that Buddy veers over into cliché, the “Deliverance”- like backwoods nut case. He should have been directed to take the intensity down a notch. Nevertheless, “The Gift” handles its genres well, much like last year’s “What Lies Beneath,” with which it has a number of similarities. Both pictures have heroines haunted by visions of a murder victim, and in both water is a recurring motif. In these movies, dripping faucets, bathtubs, lakes and ponds are always signs of trouble. “The Gift” is the better picture, however. It uses a broader palette, firmly establishing a sense of place, and skillfully sketching a wider array of characters. In the person of Annie, moreover, “The Gift” has a more complex heroine. Annie is at once grateful for her gift and troubled by it, and Cate Blanchett makes us believe that there really are people more highly attuned than most of us to the darker goings on inside the human soul. (2/1/2001)