[6.7/10] One of my favorite reads of *Arrested Development* is that despite his more decent demeanor, Michael Bluth is just as much of a self-centered jerk as the rest of his family; he’s just better at hiding it. It doesn't hold up completely. Michael cares about his son and shows some genuine decency at times in a way few other Bluths do. But especially on rewatch, you notice the subtle ways in which the show’s protagonist can be as narcissistic and harsh as his kin, despite his surface-level geniality.

That’s my favorite thing about *The Gift*. It takes that idea to its logical conclusion, casting Jason Bateman as a friendly, affable, and successful business man who passes for decent but harbors a past and a dark side that he manages to keep hidden away. Simon, his character, is essentially an alternate universe Michael Bluth, with the less savory qualities turned up to eleven.

It’s a fine showcase for Jason Bateman, who gets to pull a Bryan Cranston and use the aura of kind everyman the actor carries with him from his prior roles to underscore the mask that Simon puts on, and unleash the monster lurking beneath it. It’s not playing against type exactly, but emphasizing a darkness beneath that type that shows the malleability of that familiar persona.

The problem is that *The Gift* is strangely paced, oddly shifting in its perspective, and mostly anodyne in a way that leaves the power of that character and the performance largely wasted. The film, which really only has three characters, sets up a fairly straightforward dynamic. Nominal protagonist Robyn (Rebecca Hall) moves with her husband Simon to Los Angeles, an attempt to start over after a lost baby and a potentially related pill addiction. In L.A., the couple runs into Gordo, someone Simon knew from high school, who tries to befriend them.

The film sets up Simon and Robyn as representing contrasting perspectives on Gordo (played by the film’s writer-director Joel Edgerton). Robyn is patient and forgiving of Gordo, despite his clear social awkwardness and coming on too strong, while Simon highlights his weirdness and does everything he can to repel and be rid of the guy. Eventually, Gordo’s behavior starts to get creepier, and the film seems to be trying to establish a solid flip. Gordo, who seems to be creepy and has legitimate problems, is a decent enough guy deep down, whereas Simon, who is much more presentable and acceptable to polite society, is secretly a monster beneath that veneer.

Except that’s not really how things go. Yes, it’s revealed that Simon is an unscrupulous bully with a manipulative dark side, but Gordo turns out to be no great shakes either. The film frames its final reveal, that Gordo was gaslighting Robyn in particular as a way to get back at Simon for the abuse he inflicted on him when they were kids, as Simon’s comeuppance. But at a minimum, the film depicts Gordo as consistently unnerving Robyn, eventually dosing her, and potentially raping her, something the film leaves deliberately ambiguous.

That might work from a dramatic standpoint if *The Gift* were Simon’s story, even if it would unfortunately render Robyn mostly a prop through which Simon receives his just deserts. The problem is that the film casts this as Robyn’s story, of discovering that there’s something horrible behind her husband’s eyes, and something more understandable and pitiable about the guy who seems far more off-putting. And it spends most of the film telling that story, only to do a time jump, a shift to Simon as the point-of-view character, and some undeniable misdeeds from Gordo that serve to not only rip the movie away from Robyn, but muddle any point the movie intended to make or message it wanted to send.

Part of that seems to be a clear attempt to replicate the vibe of *Rosemary’s Baby*. There’s a similar sense of moving to a new place, potentially paranoid suspicions, a brief reprieve, and then confirmation that there’s dark things taking place, even and especially among the people closest to you. The big problem is that *The GIft* never comes close to replicating the sort of eerie atmosphere that made *Rosemary’s Baby* one of the most frightening movies ever despite a distinct lack of blood and guts or outright scares.

There is, in fact, something unnerving about the interludes Robyn spends in her new home, haunted by a sense that someone is watching her and invading her space at the same time she’s uncovering disturbing details about her husband’s past and present. But the cinematography and tone of the film do it no favors. Everything is depicted in cool blues and the staid perfection of affluent suburbia. There’s an argument that this highlights the shell Simon has erected around himself, but in practice, despite some horrific subject matter, *The Gift* comes out feeling sterile and detached, leaving the audience at a remove from the horrifying things taking place.

That’s magnified when the film can’t seem to decide on its focus. There’s some merit in Robyn’s psychological fear as Gordo stalks and haunts the place where she lives. There’s an intriguing story to be told about a superficially ideal relationship subsumed by pernicious habits and dark secrets. And there’s a worthwhile idea at play in exploring Simon’s efforts to present himself as an unquestionably good guy while behaving like anything but behind closed doors, and having his chicken comes home to roost.

But my mixing all three of these things together, and placing them all in a muted, almost anodyne setting throughout, *The Gift* can’t really capitalize fully on any of them. The film is well made and well acted, and there’s high points where it gives you glimpses of the better-realized movie lurking in there somewhere. And yet in the end, its mirror image Michael Bluth, its modern day Rosemary Woodhouse, and its scary but sympathetic stalker, don’t live up to their potential when the film they occupy can’t decide which of their stories to tell.