The Gift

Even if it was only your traditional thriller about a white-bread middle-class couple menaced by a seemingly friendly but obviously nuts interloper, The Gift, written and directed by Australian actor Joel Edgerton, would still work like gangbusters. 

Making his feature film directorial debut after helming a couple of shorts, Edgerton shows remarkable assurance behind the camera, slowly but surely generating tension and dread. But he isn't content to confidently go through the motions. Instead, Edgerton takes the material in unexpected directions, shifting the audience's perceptions and loyalties with great fluidity and subsequently creating something more discomforting and disturbing than the usual psycho-drama.

Upwardly mobile couple Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) have relocated to Los Angeles, near where Simon grew up, to pursue career opportunities and put past traumas behind them. But a chance meeting with the awkward-but-friendly Gordo (Edgerton), who attended high school with Simon, casts a shadow over their new life. Gordo worms his way in, helping the lonely Robyn around the house while Simon is working and leaving all manner of unexpected presents on the doorstep.

It's obvious Simon and Gordo have a history, one that Simon claims to barely remember. Gordo remembers, though, and while he alludes to letting "bygones be bygones" the past is going to come back to haunt Simon… and Robyn.

Edgerton's work in front of the camera is as accomplished as his work behind it - his Gordo is both pitiable and unnerving. And Bateman and Hall are just as good, both actors gradually, skilfully revealing the many facets of their characters.

But I've already said too much. The Gift isn't reliant upon twists so much as swerves, but each new direction it takes edges you deeper into its dark, confronting scenario.