THE GIFT

Simon and Robyn are a young, happy couple who decide to move into a beautiful and welcoming house in the suburbs to crown a marriage that is bringing them joys and satisfactions in every field. It is during the last shopping trips to the mall that a strange character approaches the two: it's Gordon, an old schoolmate of Simon's from school whom the man had even removed from his mind. A chance encounter and seemingly harmless encounter soon turns into the beginning of a nightmare for the two as Gordon begins to become a constant and cumbersome presence in their lives between continuous gifts and inappropriate visits that push Simon to invite him not to seek them anymore. The only problem is that the motivations that drive the man to act as a stalker are deeper than expected and involve past events that would have been better to keep secret forever. The horror and thriller genres have always drawn heavily from black crime news, demonstrating that, beyond the most atavistic fears linked to imaginary monsters and demons, what scares the human soul the most is the reality that surrounds it, in other words, everything that can strike it in a more direct and deadly way in everyday life. It is therefore not surprising that many directors have focused on the fear of the violation of intimacy and domestic space, on the widespread episodes of stalking or even some cases of bullying that the newspapers are almost full of every day to make films whose greatest strength is the use of settings and plots close to the viewer revisited in a dark and unsettling key. Among these authors, we also find the Australian actor Joel Edgerton who, for his debut behind the camera, accompanied by the blessing of the low-budget horror king Jason Blum, chooses to tell a story that is certainly not original, but that thanks to a marked adherence to reality manages to leave a deep sense of unease. His "The Gift" is a tense, vibrant psychological thriller with a plot always ready for sudden plot twists that keep you glued to the seat. With "The Gift" we find ourselves facing the classic case where the trailer can be misleading as the first images suggested the classic story of a stalker who persecutes a young married woman from whom he is sexually attracted with consequent resentment on the part of the husband. None of that. What is set up by Edgerton (who is also the screenwriter of the film) is a much more complex plot in which not everything is as it seems and every character seems to hide disturbing skeletons in the closet, an aspect that makes it clear how winning the director's choice to focus mainly on the careful characterization of the protagonists is. The figure of Gordon, played by Joel Edgerton himself, appears ambiguous and edgy and already the first look he gives to the couple at the mall reveals that what drives him to follow them is not the sexual attraction towards the young woman or the strong envy of their happy life, but the resentment towards Simon's attitudes as a servile and falsely brilliant person. The character of the excellent Jason Bateman, in fact, is the manifesto of hypocrisy: continuous smarmy manifestations of love towards his partner, a work success achieved not without resorting to immoral means and a fundamental perbenism that with the unfolding of events makes him as odious as the stalker. In the middle, we find Robyn, played by Rebecca Hall, who seems to be the weakest of the three characters and her primary function is to serve as a driver for Gordon because she is the recipient of the gifts and excessive attentions from the man. The only weak points of the film are found in a central part characterized by slower rhythms and excessive delays that, however, the director is skillful in alleviating with some scenes of light tension in full BlumHouse style, intended as a search for easy scares and a slight jump out of the seat by the viewer. But these are only minor flaws that do not obscure Edgerton's direction, which proves to be sure and even researched in some points; striking, in this sense, is his attention to the writing of dialogues that are never banal and always coherent with the development of the story and the exploitation of spaces in a symbolic key, just think of the walls of the house completely made of glass that are everything but the manifesto of privacy. "The Gift", in conclusion, is a psychological thriller not very original, but still well done thanks to its intimate nature based entirely on the protagonists and their role played in this clockwork mechanism decidedly captivating.