Cheap The Gift (DVD) (Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes) (Sam Raimi) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Gift

A horror movie for smart movie watchers? Yes!
It's not often that you come across a horror film that tells a story with intelligence and is more concerned with the people in the story than splattering blood and guts all over the screen. Well The Gift is one of the better horror films of recent years, and with names like Sam Raimi and Billy Bob Thornton behind the scenes, well, it's almost expected that's it of high quality. <
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>Annie (Cate Blanchett) is a psychic reader in a small town in the South, whose clientele consists mostly of the troubled people in town looking for answers. One of these is Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank), who looks to Annie for advice when her husband Donnie (Keanu Reeves) beats her. Donnie doesn't much care for Annie, calling her a witch and threatening physical violence if she continues to speak with his wife. <
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>One day a young woman named Jessica King (Katie Holmes) goes missing, and one of Annie's haunting visions leads the woman's fiancee Wayne (Greg Kinnear) and local law enforcement to a pond on Donnie Barksdale's property, where her body is found. Donnie is fairly quickly convicted of the crime, but once he's in jail, Annie doesn't feel any better, and she's beginning to think that Donnie may not have killed her at all. Another of her clients, a mentally unstable young man named Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi) has been acting especially strange lately, and Annie saw the prosecutor (Gary Cole) having sex with Jessica the night before her death. Meanwhile, she's also been having increasingly disturbing nightmares involving water and strangulation, and she fears for her own life. <
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>The Gift is really quite well done. The acting is pretty stellar, especially surprising to me, since the cast contains two actors, Keanu Reeves and Giovanni Ribisi, whose work I'm generally not fond of, but everyone holds their weight here. There are several taut, suspenseful scenes that get the heart rate going with fearful anticipation, and the reason they are so effective is because of the character buildup that has taken place prior. <
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>A lot of filmmakers believe that to scare the audience, you must show something scary on screen, but the scariest stuff always resides in the mind of the viewer, and director Raimi knows that, and puts this knowledge to good use. Fans of conventional horror films with vampires, demons, and zombies probably won't find what they're looking for in The Gift, but fans of psychological thrillers will be more than pleased with what The Gift offers.

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My Gift, My Curse
Boyond his predilection for films about superheroes, zombies, dark men, and producing remakes of Japanese horror cinema, director Sam Raimi can take a more dramatic detour every now and then. The Gift marks such an occasion. The movie boasts another great performance from 2004 Oscar winner Cate Blanchet, who once again is able to bury herself in a role that in any other hands may have been a disaster. <
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>Annie Wilson, (Blanchet) a young recently widowed mother of three, who lives in Brixton, Georgia and supports herself by using her psychic abilities to read others. By and large the townspeople are narrow minded, shunning her for her gift of psychic vision. When Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank) drops in for a reading, Annie's life is about to change. She advises Valerie to leave her abusive husband Donnie (Keanu Reeves) before something drastic happens. Soon after, Annie finds herself living in fear as the body of a woman is found and investigators turn to her for help. Slowly, the dark secrets of this rural southern town are exposed and Annie's 'gift' becomes her only hope of saving herself and her family <
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>Written by actor Billy Bob Thornton (who worked with Raimi on '98's A Simple Plan) and Tom Epperson, the film follows other story threads as well--like Annie also aiding in the search for missing girl, Jessica King (Katie Holmes) and helping friend Buddy Cole (Giovanni Ribisi). Although, not as tightly plotted as it could be, Raimi keeps things afloat. Blanchet is so compelling as Annie that she is the one that holds it all together for me. Special kudos must also be given to Reeves who plays a truly bad guy here. It's nice to see him stretch his acting wings. Not what you would expect from Sam The Man, but still quite good <
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>I have to say, as much as I liked the film, the extras on the DVD are very disappointing. The "exclusive" cast and crew interviews are nothing more than 10 minutes of pre release promotional stuff. I know that the film was put out at the dawn of the DVD revolution, but even so, I felt slighted somehow. A music video for the song "Furnace Room Lullaby", performed by Neko Case & Her Boyfriends and the theatrical trailer wraps things up. Time now past...careers soaring...special edtion anyone? I would give that a look for sure. <
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"Always use your instincts, honey"
Whenever I come across a movie that has Cate Blanchett as the main protagonist I know that I am in for a good ride. In this case the rule was not broken and I found a film that is very entertaining, provides high quality suspense and presents a set of Southern characters that add flair to the story. <
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>Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) is a recently widowed woman who is taking care of her three kids by working as a fortune teller. She is far from what most people see as the stereotype in this profession, since she cares about her customers and treats them as friends. This in turn leads to trouble, when the abusing husband of one of her clients warns her about intruding in their affairs. Almost simultaneously, Annie is summoned to the principal's office in their kids' school due to a problem with her oldest son and while she is there she has a very disturbing vision involving the principal's fiancé. <
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>The story picks up in pace reaching frantic speed when Jessica (Katie Holmes), the woman in Annie's vision, disappears and her father asks the fortune teller for help. Besides having to deal with this issue, Annie has to fight the disbelief of the police regarding her gift and also faces the escalating violence of Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves), who refuses to go away and wants his wife Valerie (Hilary Swank) to stop going to Annie's house. <
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>This is a well crafted story that only lacks a little bit in the quality of the ending, which may be considered a tad too predictable. Everyone in the cast provides high level performances demonstrating why they are highly regarded in their profession. Besides Blanchett, Reeves, Swank and Holmes, we get to see Giovanni Ribisi playing a deranged young man. Those of you who watched "Friends" probably remember him for his role as Phoebe's brother. In this case, his performance shows how gifted he is for portraying "disturbed" young men. Recommended.