BEWARE OF GEEKS BEARING GIFTS
The Gift (15) Verdict: Keeps you off-kilter Marshland (15) Verdict: Atmospheric Spanish noir
THE GIFT is a satisfyingly creepy debut from first-time director Joel Edgerton, who also casts himself as the film’s supposed villain.
When Simon (Jason Bateman) and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) move into a lavish house in the Hollywood Hills, they’re not expecting trouble with the neighbours.
But Simon is recognised by Gordon (Edgerton), a high school classmate, who insists on presenting the couple with a series of housewarming gifts until they feel obliged to invite him to dinner.
It’s no surprise to learn that this apparently friendless, middle-aged man was known as ‘Gordo the weirdo’ back in school. However, just as you’re settling in for a routine psychological thriller — taps are turned on in the middle of the night, the family dog disappears — The Gift pulls the rug out from under you.
I won’t reveal how, exactly, but suffice to say that Simon isn’t everything he seems. The Gift isn’t faultless. It’s not a grown-up psychological thriller, so much as a fairly routine one with a more sophisticated film struggling to get out.
At times, it feels more like two movies stuck together than a satisfying whole. But for the most part it works and the script, also by Edgerton, keeps you on your toes throughout.
MARSHLAND is set in Spain just after the fall of Franco and follows the efforts of two mismatched detectives to solve a double murder in Andalusia.
Veteran director Alberto Rodriguez is good at conjuring up a morally compromised atmosphere and achieves his aim of creating an absorbing thriller and an allegorical tale about the impact of fascist corruption on Spanish society.
In the end, though, Rodriguez introduces too many elements — there’s a psychic fisher woman who i s completely extraneous to the plot — and the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts.