[Last Film I Watch] The Gift (2015)

Title: The Gift
Year: 2015
Country: USA, Australia
Language: English
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Director/Writer: Joel Edgerton
Music:
Danny Bensi
Sounder Jurriaans
Cinematography: Eduard Grau
Cast:
Jason Bateman
Rebecca Hall
Joel Edgerton
Allison Tolman
Tim Griffin
Busy Philipps
Adam Lazarre-White
Beau Knapp
Wendell Pierce
Mirrah Foulkes
Nash Edgerton
Katie Aselton
David Denman
P.J. Byrne
Rating: 6.6/10

What happened between Simon (Bateman) Gordon (Edgerton) when they were in the high school? Is the ultimate bait propelling this thriller, a foray for Aussie Joel Edgerton to grab the director’s chair for the first time, who also becomes a latest triple-threat by taking the writer’s credit under his belt.

Simon and his wife Robyn (Hall), relocate to suburban L.A. for his new job from Chicago (after a miscarriage accident which strains their relationship) and expect a fresh start here to create a family. One day they bump into Simon’s high-school classmate Gordon, whom Simon cannot recognise at the first place (which cleverly leads viewers to put a question mark on Gordon’s suspicious identity, is he the real Gordon?). Then later, Gordon’s uninvited visits and over-frequent gift-offering gestures, all impart an inauspicious atmosphere thanks to Edgerton’s restrained manoeuvring of the common thriller cliches (only one jump-scare scene and not blood-shedding gore intended), to establish the socially awkward Gordon as a perpetrator with a sinister plan.

At the same time, Simon and Robyn begin to take a different stand, Simon formally gives an ultimatum to ask Gordon to leave them alone, but an ensuing apology letter from Gordon triggers Robyn’s suspicion, "let bygones be bygones”, what happened in the past between Simon and Gordon? With Simon’s utter denial, a perturbed Robyn starts to dig the truth by herself, through Simon’s sister and other schoolmate, she discovers the unpleasant past of her husband, and the damage he has caused to Gordon. She urges Simon to pledge forgiveness from Gordon, but once a bully, always a bully, Simon’s remorseless aggression only makes things worse, eventually Gordon’s calculated tit-for-tat will pull off a satisfactory reprisal to teach all the callous bullies a hard-learned lesson.

Edgerton has done a solid job, in all three aspects, THE GIFT confidently toys with the middle-class suburbia, lashes out at the corrupted morality in the American society of its bullying canker and partisan winner-or-loser dichotomy, challenges expectation in a compelling fashion and crowns the film with a reasonable finale, which elevates itself a niche above the standard criteria of the genre. Three leads are well-cast, Bateman subverts his comic stereotype and Hall embodies her angelic virtues with substantial appeal, and Edgerton himself is surprisingly unshowy. There is little wonder that THE GIFT is a dark-horse in the Northern American this year, tells an instructive allegory with lucid leverage and not indulgent in stock genre tropes to achieve shock value. I guess, future projects are in the offing for this promising new director.

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