Gift, The

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

When movie lovers are looking back on the best of 2001, they will still be marveling at the beauty, intelligence and seemingly effortless mastery of Ms. Blanchett's performance.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

But there were few, if any, better performances in 2000 than the one Blanchett gives here, and Raimi's crafty blend of dramatic realism and supernatural knowledge is one of the year's best directing con jobs.

Mr. Showbiz Cody Clark

The real revelation, however, is Keanu Reeves. His character is something of a caricature — a violent, white-trash wife-beater — but Reeves' portrayal is joltingly authentic.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The Gift delivers the lurid goods as a scary, sexy, twist-a-minute whodunit.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's got the pleasing proportions of a stocking stuffed with agreeable little treats in the absence of an exciting big surprise.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

For all its craft and achievement, The Gift -- which has a script that may have needed more rewriting and deepening -- is a good, minor effort; it has some real conviction, even anguish. And it has Blanchett, whose gift as an actress is sometimes transcendent.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

A solidly crafted, suspensefully written, powerfully acted little juggernaut.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

At its heart, there's Blanchett, an actress whose instincts are unerring, and dead-on.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Ingenious in its plotting, colorful in its characters, taut in its direction and fortunate in possessing Cate Blanchett.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Blanchett's quietly radiant performance anchors even the most outrageous plot developments, and she's well-supported on all sides.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A good, old-fashioned suspenser.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Overly familiar material, even well done, cannot be made more intrinsically interesting than it is. Not even by Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves.

Film.com Ernest Hardy

Blanchett projects a wounded dignity that anchors her character even when the film slips into silly hokum; she's never less than fantastic, and as such manages to keep the film on course.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

If you love actors, it's the sort of thing you might be tempted to see a second time, even after you've found out whodunit, just to examine more carefully the way the performers -- particularly the mesmerizing Cate Blanchett -- weave shining silken threads around what's essentially a pretty uninvolving narrative.

USA Today Mike Clark

Tolerance for this movie will likely depend on tolerance for melodramatic, over-the-top finales, especially ones with otherworldly twists.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

She (Blanchett) single-handedly forms the human heart of this engrossing, if ultimately preposterous, supernatural thriller.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Here, it's the creepily quiet stuff, the stuff that might be rushed over in a different movie -- Annie shivering alone in bed or being visited by her dead grandmother as she hangs out the wash -- that makes the film more than a generic distraction.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The picture is saved from mediocrity by Mr. Raimi's smooth competence, and by the unusually high quality of the acting.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A creepily effective button-pusher that owes a bit to the original "Cape Fear" both in Sam Raimi's ruthless direction and Keanu Reeves's unexpectedly robust performance as the most violent redneck peckerwood in a steamy Georgia town.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Were it not for these performances (Blanchett, Ribisi, Swank, Reeves), The Gift would be fairly negligible.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A clumsy, heavy-handed and unnecessarily sordid occult thriller that somehow has managed to generate a big pre-release buzz.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Outside of a strong (and largely misused) cast and an abundance of moody atmosphere, there's precious little to recommend this exploitative mess.

Time Richard Corliss

She (Blanchett) seems the only guardian of sanity in this good-old-boy Bellevue.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

There's too much hokum and too little suspense in the screenplay by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Pure ham and cheese.

TNT RoughCut Andy Klein

In terms of cleverly hidden exposition, this ain't "The Sixth Sense."

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

So many logical questions go unasked in The Gift, which, ultimately, is the movie's downfall. Mark this package as “Return to Sender.”

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

The bottom line, however, is that cheap and unoriginal as The Gift may be, it sucks you in.

Washington Post Curt Fields

So chock-full of stereotypes as to be a filmic Southern Country Safari.