A
horror/
thriller movie about a
psychic who sees the murder of a young local woman, the daughter of a wealthy family prominent in the
redneck town.
Cate Blanchett plays Annie Wilson, a widowed mother of three young boys who supplements her Social Security payments by giving card readings ("I don't call myself a fortuneteller") to local residents. Among her clients are Buddy Cole (played by Giovanni Ribisi), a troubled young mechanic who considers Annie his only friend, and Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank), the long-suffering wife of Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves), who comes to Annie for support when Donnie beats her and looks for hope in the readings despite her husband's belief that Annie is a witch and a Satan-worshipper. Greg Kinnear plays Wayne Collins, the principal at the school Annie's children attend, and Katie Holmes appears as Jessica King, Wayne's fiancée, who is busily cheating on him two months before their wedding - until she disappears. When conventional methods don't locate his daughter, Kenneth King (played by Chelcie Ross) turns to Annie for help, to the dismay of skeptical sheriff Pearl Johnson (J.K. Simmons). The initial reading is useless, but the next night Annie has a dream in which she sees the missing girl dead and decomposed. Her visions become more frequent and more terrifying, but Annie refuses to ignore them and continues to pursue the truth about what happened the night Jessica King disappeared.
Directed by Sam Raimi, written by Billy Bob Thornton, and filmed entirely in Georgia, The Gift was rated R for "violence, language, and sexuality/nudity" (specifically, Katie Holmes appears almost completely naked in a flashback sequence).