annie wilson ( cate blanchett ) , a widow who struggles to raise her children in a small town in georgia is asked for help by local authorities in solving the case of a missing woman . annie is something of a psychic , she has involuntary bouts with the supernatural where she can see the past and the future and physically feel the actions happenning to her she envisions . her " gift " leads to the arrest of a nasty wife beater who may or may not have killed the pretty rich girl found in the swamp on his property . in an ultra conservative backwoods town will her testimony based on her psychic visions hold up in court ? do they even have the right man ? what's good about it : aside from keanu reeves giving one of the best performances of his career as the loathable redneck donnie barksdale , there is little else going for the film . what's not so good about it : lame , unoriginal screenplay . predictable ending . suspense scenes that are just plain boring . ridicously trite characterization makes the entire south out to be ingnorant , hateful goobers . relentless in its emotional sensationaliztion . overall critique : " the gift " is one of those movies that makes you wonder where you've seen this story before . it's a collection of every cliche and stereotype of the south ever made , and coming from a yankee like me who dislikes the south that's really saying something . for an established , talented director sam raimi is unable to provide any kind of originality to this film . it's predictable from the first scene , the screenplay is written like a rip-off of a photocopied bootlegged play . you know that as nasty as the murder suspect is he didn't actually do it . it's no surprise either who the real villain turns out to be and what their motive was . sigh , how trite . for a supernatural thriller this is neither scary nor intense because it's so cliche . " the gift " is basically a glorified b-movie .
