The Gift

Cate Blanchette   d/ Sam Raimi

ESP in the southern hinterlands. Beautiful hollywood stars ( Keanu, Hilary Swank, Katie Holmes) become swamp people with crooked teeth and dumb expressions in a valiant effort to pull this overheated melodrama from the mud. They fail.

In typical Raimi fashion this was over-cooked...in his eye nothing succeeds like excess. He should do a crash course in Val Lawton, Jacques Tourneur, Hitchcock... It's the power of suggestion, of subtly leading your audience in the direction you choose and to which they are unaware that makes a classic.

A-level production with C-minus sensibility.

3