Director Sam Raimi is best known for his horror films and superhero films. His latest film, “Send Help,” is a wickedly funny horror comedy about office workers stuck on a desert island, and it has all the goo and violence Raimi is known for. Fans of the director can easily see echoes of Raimi’s famous “The Evil Dead” still lurking within.
Raimi, however, is fully capable of making more adult material and has proven his directorial skills with his first adult drama, “A Simple Plan”, released in 1998. “A Simple Plan” was a stark and cynical detective story about a small group of estranged Minnesotans – including Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda and Billy Bob Thornton – who discover a suitcase full of cash in the woods. However, having the money in their presence introduces paranoia and resentment, and it tears them all apart. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, notably for Thornton’s performance.
In 2000, Raimi made what might be his most underrated filma Southern film noir with a supernatural twist called “The Gift.” It also marked an additional collaboration between Raimi and Billy Bob Thornton, who also co-wrote the screenplay. In “The Gift,” Cate Blanchett plays a woman named Annie who possesses slight clairvoyant powers. The plot follows Annie after she has a vision of a local murder. The film’s impressive cast also included Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Giovanni Ribisi and JK Simmons.
Thornton does not appear in the film, but it appears that “The Gift” was very dear to him. On the official Thornton website (easily archived in its early 2000s form), it is notable that Thornton wrote “The Gift” based on his mother’s own psychic experiences.
Billy Bob Thornton based The Gift on his mother
Billy Bob Thornton’s mother, born Virginia Faulkner, was a self-proclaimed psychic, which he discussed on his episode of the interview show “Inside the Actor’s Studio” (easily archived online). The show’s host, James Lipton, asked Thornton quite directly about his mother’s “gift,” and Thornton responded frankly, saying:
“She has the gift of ESP. People can believe what they want, but I’ve seen it in action. […] My mother was called a witch and everything. This happened a lot at school. But everyone came to see her. And eventually, people from New York and beyond came to see her. […] We were poor. I grew up without electricity or running water. And we ate what my grandfather killed until we were six or seven years old.”
According to Thornton’s website, her mother used the same patterned psychic cards — called Zener cards — that Blanchett’s character, Annie, can use in “The Gift.” Thornton’s father died in 1974 and Thornton noted that he never really spoke with himso his mother took charge of raising Billy and his brothers. It’s not made clear whether Annie’s personality closely matches Thornton’s mother, but the parallels are clear, given that she is a widow who also raises three children and makes a living as a professional medium.
Also on the website it states that Thornton’s mother predicted he would be a successful actor. Specifically, she said Billy would grow up and acting on screen with Burt Reynolds. This prediction surprisingly came true when Thornton, in 1990, played a small role as a flower delivery boy on the sitcom “Evening Shade.” “Evening Shade” starred Burt Reynolds.
How is the gift going?
It should be noted that Billy Bob Thornton wrote “The Gift” and several other screenplays with his longtime writing partner, Tom Epperson. Epperson and Thornton wrote the screenplays for “One False Move” (which starred Thornton’s “A Simple Plan” star Bill Paxton), as well as “A Family Thing,” the TV movie “Don’t Look Back,” “Camouflage” and “Jayne Mansfield’s Car,” which Thornton also directed. They had a long and lucrative career together.
“The Gift”, for its part, is almost a forgotten film in Sam Raimi’s filmography. Perhaps because, like “A Simple Plan,” it lacks the type of wild, elegant camerawork that is more typically Raimi’s trademark. “The Gift” is a downbeat drama about Annie and her trials, while also being a sweaty, airport-style cauldron about murder and corruption in small-town Georgia. It’s about abusive husbands and the fate of the town’s “bad girl.” I will remain vague on the details of the plot, because the scenario is tortuous and the film deserves to be discovered through its thick southern atmosphere. “The Gift” was also a modest success, grossing $46.6 million on its modest $10 million budget.
Critics haven’t been very kind to “The Gift,” as it currently only holds an average approval rating of 57% on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 123 reviews). Roger Ebert gave the film three starsadmiring that Annie takes on her duties as a psychic with a pragmatic air, presenting them as very down-to-earth. He also noted, however, that the characters all live in a “swamp of melodrama”, exhibiting many Southern Gothic archetypes without much variation from the clichés he was accustomed to. Curt Fields, meanwhile, writes for the Washington Postwrote in his negative review that “The Gift” had no originality.
/Film, however, thinks it’s totally underrated.
