The Gift DVD Review

Couple Retreat 

Released : August 7th 2015

Certificate : 15

Director : Joel Edgerton

Cast : Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Jason Bateman

Plot : Childless married couple, Simon (Bateman) and Robyn (Hall), with a bumpy past move into a lavish new house in a new city for a fresh start. Upon arriving Simon is approached by Gordo (Edgerton), a high school friend of Simon. Gordo’s persistent attempts to become friends is uncomfortable and soon leads to dark waters.

The Gift is first feature length film to be directed by Joel Edgerton, and first written film in the sense that it’s his first feature length film that he hasn’t adapted from other material. Edgerton has had a limited acting career (in the sense of mainstream success), but since his arrival has turned out some critically praised performances, most famous for his lead role in Warrior, and more recently a supporting role in Black Mass. As well as Edgerton going into new water, Bateman is a lead who has the famously comedic runaway star of Arrested Development, how has had limited success with his ventures into drama grounds, with the films being little acknowledge in the mainstream and receiving modest critical praise (the films not Bateman). Hall is most at home within the genre, after her famous turn in The Awakening has proven herself a worthy thriller component. As a writing and directing debut, it gives a good insight into the tone and style the Edgerton could be taking with his future career outside of acting. Here we have a twisting, jarring thriller about one man’s friendly yet sinister relationship with a couple. With a limited cast and restricted setting of story, there’s little to distract from Edgerton three components in this film.

To open by addressing his storyline, it’s a patchy piece of brilliance, with a conflicting amount of falls and success. The film has a mostly fresh and exciting concept, which devolves issue with its deliverance with a slight issue of pacing. Reaching the end of the film, it falls into a bad trap of feeling slightly too long, the reason for which can be spotted easily. The middle act of the film is slightly extending and the plot point aren’t gone through as fast to allow for what is Edgerton directorial padding which has the function of building tension and displaying his acting talent. Some of the sequence could have been without, and the great story premise might have gained better impact if it was delivered more relentlessly. Secondly the issue that fights against the power of the strong story premise are slight issues with predictability. While the overall ending and third act of the film comes as a surprise, there are scenes which set up for later tools of tension and thrill building that you can see being constructed, which will not be named for the sake of spoilers. These two issue due reduce from what is an irrepressibly dark thriller story that has some inventive twist on the generic for an opening stance.

For Edgerton directing, he is stronger than his writing, with ability to build very impressive set pieces of tension for a first directing job. It isn’t a Sam Mendes American Beauty, but it’s the most notable quality of the film for Edgerton and why it’s exciting to see where he will next take his talent. The shot choices did use its share of the generic modern horror effects, but they were few and far between his own directing ingenuity, that they weren’t a bother. From the opening shots that prowl the house the couple are moving into you can tell that Edgerton has thought through the shot choices very well for both meaning and effect. For effect he’s presentation of the house, the camera looming with creeping shots around the house, clever camera trickery to create a really high quality jump scare and fair share of meaningful shots choices such as glass imagery in the beginning to forebode certain plot points. As upon reflection of the story not a huge amount of action or progression is actually present in comparison to modern day thrillers, however the directorial work presents the tense scenes that are effective enough to mostly account for the lack of quantity. Some might find the iconography of toys and gifts for atmosphere not quite as effective as many other Blumhouse production films, but the film tastefully relies on other effect.

For the acting, the performance that surprisingly prove the strongest out of the trio would have to be Jason Bateman for a believable and vivid performance which is the strongest performances outside of the comedy genre ever. Bateman was able to deliver a performance that served the mystery aspect of his and Edgerton characters past well enough to keep the audience entrenched in the enigma of the film, whilst the same time come across as a genuine grounded character. The strongest parts of the performance were generically the ones with the extremist of emotions, particularly within the final act of the film, where he effectively reflected the gravity of the threatening situation. There are faults in the acting, such as the scenes of childish mocking of Edgerton character which seem a little over the top. Edgerton performance in the film seemed slightly stiff, an impression was built that Edgerton was very conscious of his performance as so much was invested in this character. Resulting in a character that didn’t quiet smoothly flow on the screen as most villains do, but it can be forgiven has the first attempt at having such a wide involvement in a films making.

The Gift unfortunately isn’t up there with the greatest writing/directing debuts of actors, so this is no Dances With Wolves, however it did show promise. The initial plot concept was enough engaging the audiences from the start, however as the enigma element becomes more prevalent as the narrative progresses the quality of the film pals. As this side of the story as to the murky past of the Egerton and Batemans character is just not unpredictable enough to render a lapse in the films thriller elements, which the film sets aside for Hall’s character investigation. The directing work is by far Edgerton’s best achievement of this film as a feature length debut, as it has a slightly greater level of originality than the writing did, and only ever featured the generic effects in sprinklings. The overall feel of the film has a great establishment of an all aspects, but the different trio of genres that it attempts to incorporate create for an uneven and patchy arch of the film, not committing to either one enough. However, The Gift is an undoubtedly thrilling experiences while it lasts with a twist ending to catch the majority of audiences off guard, and a maintain atmosphere of unease and threat to provide the best film Blumhouse has made since for a while, but their recent content isn’t much to compete with.

Verdict : Edgerton has enough imagination to keep you on board for his next outing as a writer or director, but not enough talent here to establish his skill in either field, as it can’t quiet shake some aspects of the generic.

Verdict : 3/5

Quote : “You see what happens when you poison other people’s mind with ideas?”