Review of The Gift (2015) by Adnan_Soysal — 26 Sep 2020

I love the casual flow of the movie having again a casual suspense coupled with the right soundtrack. A young couple moves to Los Angeles as a result of husband's (Simon) job change. Wife(Robyn) does not work, but used to work in the past. She wants to have a baby but somehow it just did not happen. But also it looks like that she is not sure if she is happy with Simon, she feels something is odd with her relation. In LA, Simon comes across a high school friend, Gordo, and they start socializing. Old friend sounds like bit odd, scripted, psychopath.

Movie is about the old wound Gordo suffered in high school because of Simon. This incident caused miserable consequences in Gordo's life. Now, it is time for Gordo's vengeance.

Simon does not tell Robyn reason behind the strange behaviors of Gordo. Robyn got suspicious about Simon's relation with Gordo, and start investigating. While talking to another alumni from the same class, she has following dialogue.

She asks to him.

Why would he(Simon) do that?

Answer.

Because he could.

I love this dialogue. In my view, entire narrative of the movie is based on this. It reminds me Nietzsche's "You are not responsible for your actions".

In the mean time Robyn got pregnant, Simon got promoted to a new position at his job by eliminating the other candidate by smear. While celebrating his promotion at home with colleagues, his victim stones home, breaks window. All got out and Simon got him. Victim accuses Simon for his smear on him for the promotion. Simon's manager. and others hear all this.

Robyn was right about gut feeling on her husband. He was a bully at high school, and can have a smear on others. Ans he is still like that.

She gave a birth. On the day of having baby, Simon comes across three disasters 1- His company fires him after discovering his smear on other candidate 2- Gordo leaves him some evidences that baby might be from him OR not. 3- Robyn is not returning to Simon after hospital.

Yes. Fakeness could haunt you, and eventually destroy you at your most happy moment. One's fakeness could also result in others becoming psychopaths. Because although Gordo was a victim, eventually he became a fake one, psychopath also. And Robyn was right about her odd gut feelings about Simon. This movie displays all of it perfectly.