Review of The Gift (2015) by Kyle W — 19 Sep 2015

Equal parts Hitchcock thriller and 90's home invasion movie, "The Gift" is an impressive and unexpected offering from actor-turned writer-director Joel Edgerton. It's a neighbor-from-hell story, but executed with such skill and a keen eye for the suspenseful and unsettling.

Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (a fantastic Rebecca Hall) are re-routing their lives when they run into Gordo (Edgerton), an old classmate of Simon's, in a chance meeting that sets off a slow-burn of uninvited encounters and mysterious gifts.

The less said about the plot the better, as Edgerton places developments and reveals in all the right places, eschewing a lot of cheap jump scares for a more pervasive feeling of deep dread. True, he lets the audience get ahead of him sometimes, and he's shockingly not as good on camera in this one as he is behind, but from the couples' first encounter with Gordo to the last shocking reveal (a potentially horrific turn-off that somehow wasn't for me), we know we're in good hands.