The Gift (2000)

Sam Raimi avoids the camp of the "Evil Dead" trilogy to deliver some serious scares in "The Gift," a Southern-Gothic ESP thriller that stars Cate Blanchett in the role of Annie, a psychic living in a small town.

   When local flake Jessica King (Katie Holmes) gets murdered, Annie's sixth sense acts up, leading the authorities to one man: resident wife-beater and town redneck Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves). Of course, Donnie's not the one who done it, and with her power under scrutiny, Annie must find the real killer before she, too, becomes a victim.

   The strength of this movie is that it avoids the pitfalls of modern horror films. First of all, Annie isn't the usual ditzy, flaky, slutty heroine, who along with her group of dumb friends has a total IQ of 50. She behaves in an admirable and most of all, INTELLIGENT way.

Oz the Great & Powerful and Blogger Links to Share

I'm older than most of the bloggers I follow. Hell, I seem to be older than most people these days. ;-) I grew up in an era when VCRs were not yet a twinkle in anyone's eye. We had network T.V, which meant we got three channels -- y'know, if we jiggled the rabbit ears just right. And springing for a movie theater ticket -- a whopping $3 -- was a luxury. So we kids lived for those revered television specials. Of which the best of the best was, of course, The Wizard of Oz.