The Gift (2015)

It's a concept that's more often the basis of arrested development comedies about late bloomers who finally come into their own, but there's nothing funny about how the past looms over the adults that Gordo and Simon have become.

The Gift chillingly illustrates what happens when fate reunites a class bully (Jason Bateman) with his prize victim, Gordo (Edgerton).

Clever and atmospheric, the film has enough twists to keep the average viewer guessing.

Officially, this is a blank-from-hell movie. But Edgerton has remixed the formula.

The Gift starts out like so many other thrillers before it - with an attractive, well-to-do couple purchasing a big new house - and then beats its own, uniquely tense and twisted path from there.

Just when we think we know where The Gift is going, we're surprised. And then surprised again.

The Gift is almost unbearably tense

The Gift is a tense, unsettling and expertly crafted psychological thriller that keeps the audience consistently on edge. [Full review in Japanese]

The Gift is a film that just keeps on giving.

It concludes with one of the most repugnant turns this side of a '60s-era exploitation "roughie," a "twist" so vile it pretty much cancels out the considerable skill and accomplishment of what's preceded it.

The third act of "The Gift" is so gross, so exploitative that it's a wonder it made it from page to screen uncontested.

[The movie] twists an awkward encounter with an old high-school acquaintance into a cracking psychological thriller that offers some genuine surprises.