So, what is The Gift even about, you may be wondering. It opens with a husband and wife, Simon and Robyn, looking for a new house to buy in the Los Angeles area. They end up buying a mid-century modern house with way too much glass. After moving in with their pet dog, they go house shopping and run into Gordo, an old childhood classmate of Simon's. In the following days Gordo becomes persistent at spending time with Simon and Robyn, leaving gifts at their doorstep, having dinner with them, and showing up to help fix things up at their house. At first they shrug off Gordo's odd behavior, but things come to a head when past events surrounding Gordo begin to surface.
Before I get into what didn't work in The Gift, I first want to address its positive elements. Although not as much as one would expect, there was a degree of suspense that this film brought to the table. I would have appreciated more, as The Gift is classified as a thriller, but there was at least enough to keep me watching. I also thought that the plot was fairly creative and fresh; I don't know of any other movies that have a similar storyline. The acting was also done well, especially on the part of Joel Edgerton who plays the creeper role pretty well.
Now it's time we move on to what didn't work about The Gift. First I should address the fact that, although creative, I just didn't find the storyline to be all that engrossing. On the contrary, I predicted a lot of what ended up happening in this film, and my head was already guessing as to what would happen later in the plot. Adding to its predictability, I also found The Gift's plot to be a bit slow; it took some time for things to really get underway and for the main twist of the storyline to be revealed. The last point I want to make is that it was also incredibly hard for me to empathize with any of the characters in this movie. Even the people that are not portrayed as "bad guys" are simply empty shells; that is, there's no backstory about them that strongly connects them to the audience. I didn't root for anyone in The Gift, because frankly I didn't have any emotional investment in their character. I just wanted to watch and see what happened out of sheer curiosity.
So, as my closing statement for this movie review I will say that The Gift is probably not worth the price of a movie ticket to go see. Although it has a few positive elements that some of you may quite enjoy, for me it just was not very impressive. Maybe I'm the one missing something here, because this movie has rave reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and other movie review websites. But I'm only here to tell you what my opinions are, and put simply my opinion is that The Gift is a bit of a disappointment.
Rating: R
Genre: Psychological Thriller/Mystery
Run Time: 108 minutes
Release Date: August 7, 2015
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆
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