A single mother of three Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) gives psychic card
readings to the local townsfolk to make ends meet. Born with “the gift ” she
is able to glimpse into the past present or future. But her bucolic
Southern lifestyle is disrupted when her friend Valerie’s (Hilary Swank)
abusive husband Donnie (Keanu Reeves) threatens her family and accuses her
of witchcraft. In addition with the local principal’s (Greg Kinnear)
fiancée missing (Katie Holmes) amid rumors of foul play Annie’s world is
turned upside down as she experiences jarring visions of a dead body.
Unwittingly becoming the key witness to a murder no one saw she must solve
the crime before becoming a victim herself.
Embodying a working-class single mom grappling with otherworldly horrors
Blanchett delivers a memorable performance and successfully conceals her
Australian accent with a convincing Southern drawl. School principal
Kinnear‘s clean-cut image feels a little out of place in this
Savannah-adjacent story but contextually reveals itself to be a good fit.
In a small but pivotal role Swank secures her Oscar win as no fluke and
Reeves sporting a good ‘ol boy beard and baseball cap is surprisingly
menacing as her abusive husband. Quickly sweeping memories of “The Mod
Squad” under the rug garage mechanic Giovanni Ribisi provides an
unexpectedly powerful balance of tenderness and rage. Rounding out the cast
is town tart Holmes who provides ample skin and a jarring departure from
her good-girl “Dawson’s Creek” image.
Creating an uneven bookend to the masterful “A Simple Plan ” helmer Raimi
nonetheless bounces back nicely from the commercial blandness of “For Love
of the Game ” tapping his horror-film roots to create a suspenseful
character-driven story. Working from Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson’s
“Dead Zone“-reminiscent screenplay (the two writers collaborated on “One
False Move”) Raimi has created a real crowd-pleaser effectively
transcending the genre-trappings of the script. Employing techniques only a
suspense veteran could predict Raimi works all the tricks in the book not above a little audience manipulation to squeeze the most out of this
supernatural whodunit.
