Sam Raimi directs Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves and Giovanni Ribisi in this wet Southern Gothic thriller were a single mother with psychic powers becomes embroiled in a scandal involving sex, murder and abuse.

Wildly overrated in its day this was boring and predictable and overacted then and it is boring and predictable and overacted now. Raimi fights his instincts to amp up the ghoulish aspects of the script. Billy Bob Thornton based the screen story on his mother’s fortune telling abilities. Katie Holmes does a late in the runtime nude scene that is still glorious – the Dawson Peaks of her acting career. Everyone else is plainly better than the unruly, blunt, lackadaisical screenplay and it is hard to fathom why the far superior A Simple Plan exists in The Gift’s shadow.

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