KEANU REEVES' PERFORMANCE A 'GIFT' TO MOVIE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

A Southern Gothic freak-out with swampy style and just as many implausible events as a teen slasher movie, ``The Gift'' is a spooky suspense thriller - nothing more, nothing less. Just know that Keanu Reeves gives the movie's best performance. That should lay to rest all other pretensions to grandeur.

But with a resume that includes the ``Evil Dead'' movies, director Sam Raimi knows a thing or two about terror. ``The Gift'' is a smarter and less graphic work, more in line with the more recent ``A Simple Plan.'' That movie co-starred Billy Bob Thornton, who's on board in spirit here as the co-screenwriter. Thornton and longtime friend Tom Epperson wrote the screenplay several years ago, reportedly basing the movie's lead character on Thornton's mother, a psychic.

The psychic in ``The Gift'' is Annie (Cate Blanchett), a single mother who reads tarot cards for assorted eccentrics and misfits in a backwater Southern town. Her clients include Valerie (Hilary Swank), a battered wife who keeps coming to Annie for readings when she should be going instead to the police to report the misdeeds of her red-neck husband, Donnie (Reeves). Another regular is Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi), a tortured auto mechanic given to hearing voices and seeing very bad things. Annie is a widow; her husband died in an accident and the locals silently wonder why Annie couldn't have predicted that tragedy and kept her late husband safe.

She doesn't get out much. On one rare social foray, she comes into contact with the friendly principal from her boys' school (Greg Kinnear) and his flirtatious fiancee (Katie Holmes), who she later catches in a compromising position with another man. With this bunch, it's only a matter of time before something gruesome happens.

Soon the police are knocking on Annie's door, asking for her psychic help in locating a missing person. Raimi does a fine job of creating and sustaining menace, and the film's characters are richly drawn, complex and believable. The movie loses its way in the last act, however, with a series of unlikely developments and a character twist that you can see a mile away.

Still, ``The Gift'' is good, disturbing fun and succeeds at giving Reeves the role of his career - a red-neck wife-beater. Forget the Grinch; Reeves' Donnie is the meanest man in town.

``THE GIFT''

(Rated R: for violence, language, sexuality and nudity))

The stars: Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Hilary Swank.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Sam Raimi. Screenplay by Billy Bob Thornton & Tom Epperson. Released by Paramount Classics.

Running time: One hour, 50 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars