Movie of the Week: The Gift

Alexa: I’ve long been a fan of Joel Edgerton the actor, but after watching “The Gift,” I’m eager to see much more of Joel Edgerton the director. He really knocked it out of the park with his feature debut, and I imagine he’ll only continue to refine his skill from here. “The Gift” is a quietly terrifying thriller because it seems so plausible. I love a good supernatural tale as much as the next person, but “The Gift” is so unsettling because everyday human cruelty drives the conflict. It’s a jarring reminder of how much damage lies can reap, and how their unintended consequences can wreak lasting havoc on people’s lives. Edgerton sets a subtly sinister tone with his direction. He uses gorgeous set design to mask a vast array of secrets, underscoring the notion that lives that appear perfect are not always what they seem. His performance is equally eerie, and Rebecca Hall’s Robyn is a compelling lead. But casting the usually-likable Jason Bateman as Simon is particularly effective because his affable persona makes every revelation all the more disturbing. In a nutshell, “The Gift” is a sharp and thought-provoking suspense film that will instantly hook you and leave you pondering its themes long after the credits roll.

Joel: I didn’t really like the first act of this movie. The initial interactions between Gordo and Simon and Robyn aren’t really tense or unnerving. Instead they just come of as awkward, and honestly a bit cringy. It’s not really scary, and doesn’t feel like a thriller setup.  It reads more like an episode of the Office where the jokes are left out but the discomfort is left in. The movie finally kicks in around the half hour mark after Simon tells Gordo off, and they leave “his” house. From that point going forward, the movie has a great feel to it. It’s uneasy, uncomfortable, but this time in a tense thriller way. Gordo’s previous unannounced visits add to the creepy feel of Robyn alone in the house, and the whole thing feels like a really slick home invasion movie without really having to deal with the home invasion part that much.

And so this leaves me in an awkward position with this movie. I get how important the slow burn and the buildup is to building the atmosphere of the movie. I get that letting us see the relationships in the movie develop, both the husband and wife relationship, and the relationship between both of them and Gordo, pays off later in the movie. But the first half hour of the movie was an unenjoyable chore to get through and it put the movie in a hole right from the start that it has to spend the rest of the movie getting out of.

Make no mistake, the movie does get out of the hole. By the time the credits roll, it’s a good movie. It’s thought-provoking and it’s not afraid to take some risky, unexpected choices along the way, and sticks the landing. On a thumbs up/thumbs down scale, this movie easily gets the thumbs up, but you have to trust that it’s going to get there, and it doesn’t give you a lot to have faith in for a while. I don’t even have a suggestion as to what should have been done differently, because, like I said, the slow build of the first act makes the rest of the movie pay off all the better, but if you’re like me and are ready to turn the movie off half an hour in wondering where all these good reviews came from, try giving The Gift just a few more scenes. It’s about to start going places.

Chris: Hollywood has convinced me that houses that feature floor-to-ceiling glass walls are a terrible idea for your house and it tends to usually be Jason Bateman projects doing the convincing (The Gift and Ozark). The interesting thing for this movie is that the longer the movie goes, the more I realized that I couldn’t root for either guy. Both Simon and Gordo have reasons for me to be sympathetic towards them because one was traumatized at an early age and his life fell apart and the other is having his adult life fall apart because of someone terrorizing his family. However, both men are sociopaths and neither seem to have any desire to change that about themselves. Robyn is the one we’re all rooting for because she’s caught in the middle of all this only because she may have accidentally married a monster and ends up being an innocent victim. The twist at the end about the baby and how it may have been conceived was shocking but the delivery wasn’t great because it was too ambiguous for my liking. We’ve already established that Gordo is a monster so why leave it open to whether or not he did it? I’m pretty sure everyone watching is going to assume Gordo did it and for Simon, a simple DNA test will clear up any uncertainty that might be plaguing him. Overall, I think it was an interesting movie that did a lot of things incredibly well but just tripped a little at the finish line.

Jason: This was a good pick. It’s not really a horror movie so much as a suspenseful mind-freak. And it truly brings on the suspense. Gordo is such a creepy character throughout the entire film and we don’t see him do anything until the very end! His posture, mannerisms, and speech patterns all just give the impression that something is off. Simon starts out as a sympathetic character but as you learn more about him, you see how awful he really is. And in the end, he doesn’t face justice for his past actions, only comeuppance. Gordo gets even but doesn’t redeem himself in the act. The only character we can really feel sorry for is Robin. She is the victim on every front and she can do nothing to help herself.

Even the way the movie is shot adds to the unease. Many of the shots feel  voyeuristic, like we’re looking in on a scene we’re not supposed to see. It really creeped me out. And then the uncertainty of the ending left me feeling icky. There is an alternate ending out there that explains what actually happened but what we got was unsettling.

I enjoyed seeing Jason Bateman in a non-comedy role. There were still hints of Michael Bluth in there but when he went full bully mode, he was unrecognisable.

As I said, I enjoyed this movie. However, it won’t be one that I can go back to time and again. It was just so darn uncomfortable.