The Gift Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews 
The Gift

The Gift is a thriller following this married couple, Simon and Robyn, as they move to a new neighbourhood in a new city. While here, Simon stumbles upon Gordon, a "friend" from high school, who it turns out is a little creepy. Gordon continuously makes unannounced visits, lets off just a bunch of red flags, and it's all because of something that happened a long time ago. The film stars Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, and Joel Edgerton, and is also Joel Edgertons directorial debut. And as far as directorial debuts go, damn good job.

So if anyone here saw any of the marketing for this movie, you would think it looks bad. To my surprise, The Gift is one of the best movies of the year so-far. First off, Jason Bateman shows off a lot of dramatic acting talent in this movie. He completely sheds his comedy and plays a really complex protagonist for this movie. Rebecca Hall is also great, better than you would suspect. There's a lot of emotion to her character, and she completely sold it. Joel Edgerton was also fantastic, from the trailer I totally thought he was going to be this over the top stalker guy. That's not what happened, he played it perfectly, he was creepy, he was subtle. If this movie can be described with one word, it's subtle.

The Gift goes between two different tones between the first and second act. The first half of this movie is mostly a suspense/thriller. As a thriller director, Joel Edgerton seems to know how to keep you at the edge of the seat for most of the movie. The camera movements and shots are delicate, and really well placed, so while you're watching there's this build up of suspense, when nothings happening. Just the unsettlingly quiet and slow shots to keep your blood pumping. And it totally works, the first half of this movie is really creepy and unsettling.

However, the first half isn't what makes The Gift such a great film. The second half of this movie is where this movie gets a little more complex, and it's fantastic. You start to find out more about Simon and Gordons past, and this portion of the movie builds into one of the most engaging films I've seen all year. You start to question whether or not the main character is a good person, all these characters become really three dimensional characters. A perfect description for this movie would be that it's like if the American remake of Oldboy was as good as the original Oldboy. And yes, this movie is just as good as Oldboy.

Final Rating

Guys, I cannot stress this enough, go check out The Gift. Make sure this movie beats out Fantastic Four at the box office, this is a movie that truly deserves to be seen. It's chilling, it's disturbing in some parts, and incredibly complex and well-written in others. Unless you can't handle some disturbing or hard to watch scenes, absolutely go see The Gift. It is hands down the biggest surprise of 2015 so-far, and it's absolutely one of the best movies I've seen all year.