annie wilson ( cate blanchett ) , a widow who struggles to raise her children in a small town in georgia is asked for help by local authorities in solving the case of a missing woman . 
annie is something of a psychic , she has involuntary bouts with the supernatural where she can see the past and the future and physically feel the actions happenning to her she envisions . 
her " gift " leads to the arrest of a nasty wife beater who may or may not have killed the pretty rich girl found in the swamp on his property . 
in an ultra conservative backwoods town will her testimony based on her psychic visions hold up in court ? 
do they even have the right man ? 
what's good about it : 
aside from keanu reeves giving one of the best performances of his career as the loathable redneck donnie barksdale , there is little else going for the film . 
what's not so good about it : 
lame , unoriginal screenplay . 
predictable ending . 
suspense scenes that are just plain boring . 
ridicously trite characterization makes the entire south out to be ingnorant , hateful goobers . 
relentless in its emotional sensationaliztion . 
overall critique : 
 " the gift " is one of those movies that makes you wonder where you've seen this story before . 
it's a collection of every cliche and stereotype of the south ever made , and coming from a yankee like me who dislikes the south that's really saying something . 
for an established , talented director sam raimi is unable to provide any kind of originality to this film . 
it's predictable from the first scene , the screenplay is written like a rip-off of a photocopied bootlegged play . 
you know that as nasty as the murder suspect is he didn't actually do it . 
it's no surprise either who the real villain turns out to be and what their motive was . 
sigh , how trite . 
for a supernatural thriller this is neither scary nor intense because it's so cliche . 
 " the gift " is basically a glorified b-movie .