THE GIFT: Trash Cinema At Its Most Intelligent

A great director can elevate a movie that is nothing short of trash cinema into something masterful. Throughout his career, Orson Welles repeatedly chose projects (most notably Touch of Evil) as a challenge to see whether he could make a good movie out of source material that was far closer to the gutter than the stars. A cursory glance at some of the best directors of all time, from Welles and Alfred Hitchc*ck to David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh more recently, reads like a list of directors who enjoy cinema at its silliest, yet are such technically skilled filmmakers with a clear love for genre filmmaking that their movies are only ever laughable in a knowing way. For his directorial debut, actor Joel Edgerton shows a clear love for tightly-plotted narratives defined by their big twists, with each subsequent twist plunging the film further and further into enjoyably trashy territory.

A Hybrid of Trash Cinema and Serious Drama

Edgerton never treats his story as trash; in fact, he manages to get you emotionally involved in a way that Fincher and Soderbergh seldom do, due to their ironic detachment from the more ridiculous aspects of their material. Edgerton clearly loves this kind of thriller (in terms of ridiculousness, it is essentially an erotic thriller with no erotic aspects) and it shows – but he also understands that, as an actor who is always on the lookout for great roles, adding emotional depth helps make this much more interesting than a simple genre throwback.

The Gift is unique for a genre movie of this variety due to the fact that it also moonlights as an actors showcase – although being the debut feature from a well known actor, this shouldn’t be such a big surprise. In performances close to their very best, Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall give realistic performances in the face of increasing melodrama as Simon and Robyn, a married couple who have relocated from Chicago to California, near the town of Simon’s childhood, due to the stress of her miscarriage and his new job working for a major security firm. When out to buy supplies for their new home, Simon gets recognised by Gordo (Edgerton), a friend from school who he claims to not remember, but agrees to meet up with him anyway.

Before they even meet up, Gordo starts sending gifts to their house, helping Robyn with moving in activities whilst Simon is at work. Getting annoyed and increasingly creeped out by a man who was nicknamed “Gordo the weirdo” as a child, Simon puts his foot down and tells him not to meet up with the couple again, as he is becoming too involved with them (even though Robyn likes his company). He doesn’t meet up with them again, but that doesn’t stop their paranoia, as the demons from Simon’s past brought up by Gordo’s sudden reappearance begin to overwhelm his personal and professional lives.

The film is being released via the prolific Blumhouse Productions company, who are responsible for every middling horror franchise from Insidious to The Purge. The weakest moments here are three sequences that try to generate the same “jump scares” that their usual movies do, in a way that seems included solely as part of a contractual obligation. It is to Edgerton’s credit that he manages to pull two of these off rather well; but then again, he is dealing with the messy consequences of human emotions, not sinister demons from the netherworld. Grounding the horrors in reality makes it all the scarier. I use the word “horrors” lightly of course, as this film portrays human emotion at its most messy and unpredictable, ensuring that any jump scares are well earned and not loudly telegraphed as they would be in a haunted house movie.

Performances far stronger than you would expect

Even though the emotions are clearly heightened, they never become unrealistic due to how stellar the performances are. As Simon, Jason Bateman is cast against type, yet plays the role to his strengths; he is an obnoxious, detestable bully, yet Bateman plays him in an initially carefree way (no different to his usual straight-man comic persona) that highlights the most intriguing character flaw: he doesn’t realise he is a bully. His character arc is reminiscent of the episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) begrudgingly visits her high school reunion, assuming she was a bullied nerd, until she gets told that everybody hated her because she was the bully herself.

Simon is one of the vilest onscreen creations for quite some time, and it is to Edgerton’s credit as a writer that he never gives him a single shot at redemption, in the way that Hollywood movies always do. Edgerton has an equally tricky challenge of making his character seem both likeable as the victim of childhood bullying, whilst also a plausible threat to the stability of the family unit.

This is actually managed through the strengths of Edgerton’s screenplay, that seems tailor made to fit his performance. The movie is devoid of plot holes to the extent it makes all of Gordo’s illogical behaviour plausible to the narrative – yet he doesn’t see this as an excuse to not milk paranoia out of the main characters. Edgerton’s greatest strengths are his screenwriting talents; he also co-wrote last year’s terrific (and underappreciated) The Rover, which broke interesting new ground in the “dystopian future” genre of Australian cinema, playing frequently like an arthouse Mad Max. He clearly has a love and respect for trashy genre cinema and more respectable arthouse fare.

It is telling that the two main inspirations for The Gift are Fatal Attraction and Michael Haneke’s Cache, a film that subverts expectations of revenge thrillers and doesn’t give you any easy answers about the nature of the revenge – a trick Edgerton pulls here, right up until the haunting final shot. There is also a clear Hitchc*ck inspiration, as the whole film is about being paranoid of being watched by a stranger; a classic home invasion trope, but also a reversal of the Rear Window formula.

The stand-out performance (and to a lesser extent, the audience surrogate) is from Rebecca Hall as Robyn. Her performance is as subtle as it is possible to be in a film consisting highly of angry, messy emotions. She manages to remain nuanced even when faced with the increasing horrors of the plot. The psychological thriller is based on artifice, as it usually goes hand in hand with melodrama. Hall reacts to the unfolding revelations in the way that any rational human being would, which makes the more fantastical plot contrivances carve bigger emotional wounds than they would otherwise.

On the whole, this is a far more emotionally affecting film that you would have any reason to believe, especially if you’ve ever been a victim of bullying. Whereas onscreen bullies have often resembled easily beaten jerks like Biff in Back to the Future, Bateman’s performance as Simon is the most eerily realistic; he has everything he wants in life and has forgotten entirely about the past and the damage he caused. Saying more about how this will affect victims of bullying is tantamount to spoiling the film. All that I’m going to say is that Bateman’s acceptance of his bullying nature and his attempts to apologise to Gordo for it registers as one of the most harrowing movie scenes this year. Hall’s performance works, as it is a direct mirror – without any reference or acknowledgement in the script, you can sense her character was a victim of bullying in the past, making her incredibly uneasy with her husband’s casual behaviour.

Conclusion

Instead of being a generic horror or psychological thriller, The Gift is a superior drama with a plethora of thrilling moments. As a first time director, Edgerton proves that he has a deep love for genre cinema, but an equal admiration for his characters. As well as being thrilling and emotionally affecting, this is the best written, characterised and acted piece of genre filmmaking you are likely to see this year.

Have you seen The Gift? Did you think it worked as a drama, or that it was too silly to take seriously?

The Gift is out now in the UK and US. All international release dates can be found here.

(top image source: STX Entertainment)