Bullying is backdrop for The Gift

Robyn has a soft spot for the helpful oddball but Simon wants nothing to do with the man who had the nickname of “Gordo the Weirdo” once upon a time.

With the couple’s glass-fronted abode becoming just one of several terrifyingly permeable boundaries, the growing mismatch between polished exteriors and unravelling interiors provides a field day for the actors. “We went to school together”. “The Gift” opens benignly enough, focusing on a couple ostensibly at the apex of professional and personal success as they effortlessly climb the professional ladder and comfortably settles into their dream home, until a chance encounter with someone from the past. Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) have moved to Los Angeles to get away from bad memories and events.

When the two men meet in a department store – Simon is shopping with his wife, Robyn (Rebecca Hall) – there is awkwardness all around as Simon is forced to make small talk.

“The real germ of this idea was what it would be like 25 years after high school to have someone tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, do you remember me?’ Especially if you had been a kind of mean-spirited person in school or had been a bully”, Edgerton says. And Hall has the film’s most complex role as a haunted woman trying to sort out her own life while she seeks the truth about her husband. Gordo seems a little creepy right off the bat.

Edgerton’s film plays as homage to the polished, stylized thrillers of the 1980s and “90s, when things went bad for yuppies”.

Edgerton keeps his screenplay timely by his use of bullying as a backdrop.

Joel Edgerton has a knack for making malice look lovable, as he demonstrates as the head of a crime family in Davis Michod’s “Animal Kingdom” (2010) and as the leader of the SEAL team in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” (2013).

Robyn, however, continues to be unnerved when she’s home alone (although why doesn’t this house have a fancy security system?) and is reluctant to accept Simon’s insistence they put this behind them. The dinner party scenes in which Bob and his neighbors discuss poor, unsuccessful Gordo are quietly horrifying. Bateman deliciously plays against type as a manipulative, back-slapping executive who will step on anyone to get ahead.

At its conclusion, “The Gift” takes a leap that’s hard to believe, but it doesn’t undo the story’s main theme, which could be summed up as “what happens when you poison other people’s minds with ideas”.

This summer, there’s The Gift, another thriller about a guy who shows up unexpectedly, though actor-turned-director Joel Edgerton artfully and suspensefully riffs on life-invasion movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle more than Halloween.

What works: Credit is due to Edgerton’s direction, which results in a slick looking film and three assured lead performances. Slick, sharp and terrifying, “The Gift” is a truly brilliant thriller – and, one hopes, the first of many features from Edgerton to come.