Review of The Gift (2015) by Thomas K — 12 Aug 2016

Simon (played by Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) are a happily married couple and have just moved, due to a promotion for Simon, to Los Angeles from Chicago. Simon bumps into someone he knew at school, 20 years ago - Gordon (Joel Edgerton). Gordon starts sending the couple gifts and starts dropping around their house unexpectedly. Initially they are happy to humour him but he is not really a friend of theirs and is a bit creepy, so they ask him to stay away from them. Gordon obliges but from his parting note Robyn thinks that there may be an incident in Simon and Gordon's schooldays that Simon doesn't want to talk about. So she starts investigating...

Okay - reasonably interesting but not that great. Quite slow-moving with the promise of a great revelation and possibly some sort of revenge-motivated violence. However, the revelation isn't that extreme, certainly not as shocking or profound to warrant such a build-up of tension. Probably the biggest revelation is that you can't always judge the characters by your initial impression, but even that isn't so revolutionary.

The conclusion is also a bit unsatisfactory and misguided. The revenge is bizarre and exceeds the initial offense, yet the perpetrator is made out to be a hero.

Still, intriguing and engaging enough. A decent directorial debut from Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the script.