So we brace ourselves for that bunny-boiling moment, and as a writer, director and actor, Edgerton plays with us mercilessly, dropping all kinds of hints and revelations about the reality beneath the surface of these characters. It is also frankly derivative, but Edgerton steals from the best, like his “Zero” director Bigelow.
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“His ability as a straight man in a comedy is that he’s a straight guy who can also get a laugh because he has this ability to perfectly comment with his expression by just listening and reacting in a way that hits the exact thoughts of the audience”, Edgerton said about his co-star.
Matt Kennedy From left, Joel Edgerton, Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall in “The Gift”.
Edgerton himself plays Gordo, a vaguely creepy figure they meet while out shopping.
Edgerton’s film plays as homage to the polished, stylized thrillers of the 1980s and “90s, when things went bad for yuppies”.
Edgerton is spectacularly creepy as Gordo, and Hall’s Robyn gives the movie its needed heart and moral compass. Gordo is someone he didn’t treat so well in high school and it’s now 25 years later. In front of it, Edgerton’s Gordo, a damaged, secretive – and possibly vengeful – former high school classmate of Bateman’s character, feels disturbingly, hauntingly real. As a result, they’ve broken up with him as an acquaintance. He alludes to one of the most disturbing sequences in her “Strange Days” (1995), presenting a film within the film that tells more than a character wants to know, and not enough.
Can you really go through life having never wronged anyone? The olive branch is swatted out of his hand in an odd way when Gordo suggests to him that this may have come a little bit too late. The twists and turns stack up and by the end credibility is severely under question, but if you’re willing to cast that aside and embrace its more hysterical leanings you’ll be in for a very pleasant surprise. Simon (Bateman), a corporate rockstar, and Robyn (Hall), a troubled recovering drug addict, move from Chicago to Los Angeles, and into a house of wall-to-wall glass, which is an unsubtle metaphor for their bourgeois vulnerability to outside terror. “I’m not responsible for your downfall”.
There are building blocks of suspense in this movie.
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At the shockingly sizable mansion – who knew he could afford such digs – dinner is interrupted by Gordo’s emergency exit, which lets the uneasy couple snoop around. What he comes up with is subtle, sinister, and surprisingly effective, particularly in the way it views men who stomp around importantly, busy with their various pissing contests and the general business of running the world. After a formulaic intro, it suddenly veers off the familiar track, eschewing most typical slasher stuff to peel back the emotional and psychological layers on each of the main characters, none of whom are entirely who they initially appear to be.
