The Gift

Oscar-Winner and Golden Globe. Winner Cate Blanchett leads an incredible all-star cast including Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry), Keanu Reeves (The Matrix), Katie Holmes (Wonder Boys), Giovanni Ribisi (Saving Private Ryan), and Oscar-nominee Greg Kinnear (As Good As It Gets) in this stylishly filmed mystery that's as eerie as a backwoods swamp with a dark secret beneath it's even darker surface. Widow and mother of three, Annie Wilson (Blanchett), makes her living by foretelling others' futures...though her own has become cloudier than even she can see. Threatened by a client's violently jealous husband (Reeves) and plagued by visions of a missing towns-girl (Holmes), Annie is unwittingly pulled into a thicket of lies and deception in which her extraordinary gift could be used against her...and get her killed. Written by Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade) and Tom Epperson (A Family Thing), and directed by Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan), The Gift is a gripping tale of supernatural intrigue...and chilling terror.

Take a pinch of psychic phenomenon, add a dash of Southern gothic, stir in a sharp cast of talented actors, and you'll come up with The Gift, director Sam Raimi's ingenious gumbo of a thriller. It doesn't hold together as well as Raimi's earlier A Simple Plan, but the two films are stylistically connected--The Gift was cowritten (with Tom Epperson) by A Simple Plan's costar, Billy Bob Thornton, who in turn draws from the Deep South milieu that informed his own Sling Blade and his earlier collaboration with Epperson, One False Move. A similar sense of mystery permeates The Gift, in which a small-town Georgia psychic (perfectly played by Cate Blanchett) is tormented by tragic loss and visions connected to the murder of a local vamp (Katie Holmes) whose schoolteacher fiancé (Greg Kinnear) is a prime suspect.

Other suspects include a hot-tempered bully (Keanu Reeves) whose battered wife (Hilary Swank) is one of the psychic's regular clients, and a traumatized local (Giovanni Ribisi) who is tenuously stabilized by therapy and antidepressants. While this trio of potential killers keeps the mystery alive, the requisite red herrings don't add much to the film's low-level suspense. Instead, Raimi is far more effective in creating an atmosphere of anxious dread that wells up from each of these finely drawn characters, starting with the widow psychic's extended mourning for her lost husband, the agonized terror of a beaten wife, and the percolating anger of a cuckolded spouse. All of this makes The Gift a worthy showcase for its esteemed cast, even as its plot twists grow increasingly familiar. --Jeff Shannon