Joel Edgerton seemed to have come out of nowhere when he made my brother cry with Warrior. He's having a better decade than most, even if the film's themselves aren't up to scratch, though he has been around for nearly 20 years including a forgettable role in the forgettable Star Wars prequels. In his first chance at the helm both writing and directing a film, The Gift is a promising statement for a focused creator while The Rover left a couple hints that this would be the case. Naturally, Edgerton himself is the best part of The Gift, with his role as the maligned Gordo haunting the film with his unassuming yet disarming presence. Throughout the film we feel like a voyeur peering into Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall's lives through his eyes.
As a domestic horror, or rather, a psychological thriller, Edgerton makes wise choices in giving The Gift a very understated approach. It's much more straightforward than I expected, while the music occasionally indulges in boiling our senses, it's otherwise held back and effective in its detail and slow unveiling of backstory. While it suffers to overcome solutions it doesn't consider, it instead chooses a much smaller scale to inflict its damage. It does a good job of showing a past coming back to bite the present as well as the influence of a rumour, or in its vengeance's case, persuasion. Bateman delivers one of the best dramatic performances he's given yet but Hall steals the moments in her nuanced unease. This is solid engaging work that leaves its paranoia stinging but a couple questions unanswered.
7/10
As a domestic horror, or rather, a psychological thriller, Edgerton makes wise choices in giving The Gift a very understated approach. It's much more straightforward than I expected, while the music occasionally indulges in boiling our senses, it's otherwise held back and effective in its detail and slow unveiling of backstory. While it suffers to overcome solutions it doesn't consider, it instead chooses a much smaller scale to inflict its damage. It does a good job of showing a past coming back to bite the present as well as the influence of a rumour, or in its vengeance's case, persuasion. Bateman delivers one of the best dramatic performances he's given yet but Hall steals the moments in her nuanced unease. This is solid engaging work that leaves its paranoia stinging but a couple questions unanswered.
7/10