The Blabbering Inferno: THE GIFT. REVIEWED.

The Gift (2015)

Rating- 15

Running Time- 1 hour 48 minutes

Directed by- Joel Edgerton

Written by- Joel Edgerton

The usual rule with horror movies is that if they come out in the summer, albeit in this case - late on in the summer, they aren’t expected to be that good hence them not being released in the prime horror season i.e. the weeks surrounding and including Halloween. The Gift though is probably the best horror movie to come out in a very long time and that’s because it doesn’t just rely on jump scares: it is a genuinely brilliant psychological thriller. The horror is chiefly created through what we assume, not what we see and that technique only works if the film has an antagonist who is not only truly frightening but also an emotionally complex character in their own right.

The Gift sees successful, young couple Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) move to LA to make a fresh start following the traumatic loss of their unborn baby. There they run into Gordo (Joel Edgerton), a childhood acquaintance of Simon, who is eager to become good friends with them despite their dismissive attitude towards him. This develops into Gordo becoming seemingly obsessed with Robyn, something she doesn’t seem to mind but infuriates Simon who tells Gordo to leave him and his wife alone. This triggers a switch in Gordo whose harmless fixation takes a sinister turn which leads to a dark secret from Simon’s past being revealed.

The film relies on the three central characters to be fully fleshed out and appear real for its effect to be properly realised. It does this in a way that serves both the intensity of fear as well as the plot; the characters’ believability naturally makes the film more scary but the fact that we are set up with an instant idea of who we think these characters are only to be continuously surprised as we learn more and more about them enhances the dynamic of the film’s story. We are constantly doubting ourselves over who the real villain of this movie is and, with each dose of perfectly placed information, we are left with a completely different outlook on the film as a whole and particularly the characters which keeps the film fresh but also has us constantly switching allegiances and altering our opinions on everything we have seen before. This results in us feeling that we still don’t really know these characters, or the full extent of their story, even after the movie has finished which seemed impossible after the film’s opening made us think that we had the very same characters completely sussed. But, this feeling of ignorance somehow leaves us more satisfied than we would have been if we were made aware of everything there was to know; this is largely the reason the film is as good as it is. All of this points to very good writing.

This is not the only way the quality of the writing is showcased though. While the opening is establishing what will eventually be proved to be false identities for the main characters it is also ingeniously planting clues that we don’t realise are as important as they end up being at the end of the film. Pretty much everything that makes the film’s end so chilling is given to us almost subconsciously in the first fifteen minutes of the film so that when we are watching the final revelation we are suddenly thinking back to all of those supposed irrelevancies and putting them all together to make the horror of the final scene ten times more disturbing than it already is.

My only major gripe with this fil is that is decides to include two or three jump scare that, despite being superbly incorporated, weren’t necessary and end up taking away from the psychological fear that was so brilliantly conveyed just by resorting to the easiest way to make people scared. Don’t get me wrong, jump scares when used well are fantastic ways to generate a strong, visible response from the audience but there is a time and place for them and this movie had the chance to prove that you can make a truly great horror movie without them. It doesn’t stop the film from working in the way it does but it doesn’t add anything that was really needed and I would have preferred to see the film without them if only to show that horror can be scary without jump scares.

Overall, an incredibly chilling horror film that achieves real psychological fear through a great script and excellent acting. It’s a film that keeps you on your toes for its entirety and delivers an ending that is as unpredictable as it is brilliant.