Haunting Gift one of the year’s best
FILM | Chuck Koplinski
Smart, uncompromising and timely, Joel Edgerton’s excellent new thriller The Gift is a sly little film that mirrors its main character in all the best ways. Unassuming and deceptive, the movie slowly sucks you in, leading the viewer down what seems a familiar path only to play against expectations, shunning the more sensational aspects of the genre to ultimately deliver a humanistic tale of abuse and its effects on both the victim and perpetrator.
Having just moved to Los Angeles, Simon and Robyn (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) are eager for a fresh start. He’s secured a position in an up-and-coming corporation as a security consultant with the prospect of a major promotion in the offing while she’s focused on starting their family, hoping to become a mother after a miscarriage the year before. Things fall in place for them almost effortlessly when they have a chance encounter with Gordo (Joel Edgerton), who claims to be an old acquaintance of Simon’s. Immediately, the couple realizes that there’s something a bit odd where this stranger is concerned and his peculiarities become more apparent as he ingratiates himself into their lives. Soon he shows up announced for dinner, leaves gifts on their doorsteps and seems to visit whenever Simon is at work and Robyn is home alone.
The premise may seem familiar as the similarities to Fatal Attraction and Single White Female are inescapable. But Edgerton, who also wrote the script, isn’t interested in pumping out just another simple slasher film, setting his sights on delivering a character study and cautionary tale similar to Michael Haneke’s Cache. Secrets from the past come home to roost for both Simon and Robyn, all to a devastating effect, leaving them vulnerable to Gordo’s machinations, all of which are psychological in nature rather than physical.
Perhaps Edgerton’s wisest decision is the deliberate approach he takes in telling the story, slowly revealing one key piece of information after another regarding the three principals, our perceptions of them changing with each subtly delivered bombshell. Simon, Gordo and Robyn aren’t rendered as genre stereotypes but as complex characters, each hobbled by their own weaknesses and unrealistic expectations. The lines become blurred and before you know it, you’re not quite sure who the real good guy or bad guy is, as it becomes apparent that while Simon and Gordo may be cut from the same cloth, their motivations are decisively different.
Credit must be given to the three principal cast members who respond to the solid characters they’ve been given with nuanced performances that help elevate the material. Bateman’s past performances, suffused with a degree of snark that’s become a reliable crutch for the actor, have always had an undertone of malevolence, which is allowed to fully bloom here to an effectively unsettling result. Meanwhile, Hall is able to avoid the pitfalls of becoming just another damsel-in-distress, generating genuine sympathy for Robyn as she tries to come to grips with her world being turned upside down. Edgerton matches them step-bystep, giving an unnerving and ultimately sympathetic performance as a man stunted by an event from his past, adhering to a perverse sense of morality to set things right.
An exercise in psychological terror, The Gift is a potent reminder that the sins of the past are often never truly laid to rest. While Gordo may insist – ironically – that, “it’s really important to not look back,” this sort of denial only compounds the potential harm that may befall us if we refuse to acknowledge and rectify our mistakes. Powerful and haunting, The Gift will resonate with viewers far after the final credits roll, as its climax features the greatest offense: trespass of the mind, body and soul, leaving its characters irreversibly damaged. Edgerton goes for broke here, and it results in one of the best films of the year.
Contact Chuck Koplinski at ckoplinski@usd116.org.
