Thoughts on The Gift

 On Tubi, I watched the 2015 film The Gift (not to be confused with the 2000 film The Gift), written and directed by actor Joel Edgerton, and really liked it a lot. My parents just watched it and recommended it to me. It’s a psychological thriller about an affluent couple named Simon and Robyn (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) who move from Chicago to an L.A. suburb for Simon’s corporate job, and live in a fancy swanky house. Robyn is working from home, and is struggling after a pregnancy loss. Robyn is more introverted and quiet and nice, while Simon is more outgoing but has a sarcastic sense of humor that can come off as snobby.

    By chance, they are approached by Gordo (Edgerton), a former high school classmate of Simon’s, and Gordo, an awkward oddball loner, pushes himself into their lives, showing up unannounced at their home and sending them gifts. Simon is often dismissive towards him, treating him as a weirdo, and refusing to acknowledge how his treatment of him in high school led him to his current path in life. While Robyn just sees him as being misunderstood and a little odd, but as the story unfolds, she both is creeped out by Gordo’s quiet stalking of their lives, and realizing that Simon has a much more sinister side to him than she realizes.

    The main trio are all excellent in this film. Bateman’s usual sarcasm is used to make him more of a bully; Edgerton’s quiet reserve makes him more mysterious and intimidating, and Hall’s cerebral intelligence makes her more suspicious as to what these two men in her life are capable of.

    I kept thinking of Michael Haneke’s 2005 film Caché, where Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil play an affluent Parisian couple who receive anonymous messages from a stalker, sending them videos of them in their home, and making them paranoid, and Binoche’s character worrying that Auteuil’s character’s past has come back to haunt them. There felt to be some similarities, and the Wikipedia article for The Gift did acknowledge Caché as one of Edgerton’s influences for the film, along with Hitchcock’s films.

    This was a brilliant film, and I’m glad I checked it out.