Movie Review: "The Gift" (Joel Edgerton, 2015)

JUST OUTSIDE THE DOOR by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Rebecca Hall stars as a tormented spouse in Mr. Edgerton’s film.  Photo ©STX Entertainment

 

There are four stars in the icy new horror-thriller “The Gift.”  The first is Joel Edgerton, who plays a wan creep named Gordo; the next two are Rebecca Hall and Jason Bateman as Robyn and Simon, two of Gordo’s victims; and the fourth and most crucial is Rebecca Hall’s hair, which is easily the most expressive performer in the film.  Cut short, it makes her neck look bizarrely long and it bounces at odd angles, looking stylish yet deliberately off-center—not unlike this elegant and deeply muddled movie.
 

            “The Gift” is Mr. Edgerton’s directorial debut (as an actor, his resume encompasses films as diverse as “The Great Gatsby” and “Revenge of the Sith”), and it’s already apparent that he possesses a talent for extreme visual control.  Working with the skilled production designer Richard Sherman (“Breaking Dawn”), he drains the film of color, especially during scenes set in the pristine Los Angeles house that Robyn and Simon move into in the film’s opening moments.

            Soon, however, the film’s dull whites and beiges are breached by the arrival of a red envelope.  And another.  And another.  They’re from Gordo, an old classmate of Simon’s with a penchant for housewarming gifts and a habit of visiting Robyn when she’s home alone.  Supposedly, Gordo has a job, but he seems to have an unusual amount of free time; his pale, friendly face is never far from Simon and Robyn’s front door, where he eagerly waits to be invited inside.

            These are not idle visits; Gordo’s generosity (at one point, he leaves a fleet of orange-finned fish in Robyn and Simon’s front yard pond) is a prelude to acts of sinister mayhem that, at the theater where I saw the film, inspired at least one viewer to unleash several unearthly shrieks.

Still, for all Mr. Edgerton’s skill at building dread, he falters once the buildup is complete.  As accusations are leveled, tears are dripped, and suburban glass is shattered by gunfire, “The Gift” grows increasingly nonsensical.  Of course, there is some pathos—with vague conviction, Mr. Edgerton concocts a back story about how Simon tormented Gordo in high school, suggesting that it is Simon’s own fault that a predator like Gordo exists.  But this juicy idea is spattered by a dull scene where Simon sobs with regret, humbled by his many and varied sins.

            Even worse is the miscasting of Ms. Hall.  Seven years ago, she played a gleefully disdainful tourist in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” a movie that permitted her to unearth her inner Grace Kelly.  But in “The Gift,” she is yet again called upon to play the part of the delicately pained love interest, something that is as boring to watch as it must have been to perform.