A young woman gets killed in a small town, and Annie Wilson, a widowed mother of three boys, is the only one who can help to find the killer by using her "gift", an ability to see and foresee things supernaturally.
The film starts out fine, introducing the characters one by one, and aptly creating the atmosphere of a typical southern urban town. But somewhere in the course of the story, the film seems to lose its pace. Annie has dreams and visions of the murdered woman's corpse and whereabouts, which are supposedly meant to be shocking and frightening, but most of the time they are just silly and annoying. Hilary Swank is utterly bad and unwatchable in a very passive and uninteresting role, you wonder why she agreed to play such a character after her Oscar win that year. And the last third is so unbearably predictable, it's completely unbelievable, that Annie does not realize the situation, especially when she is assumed to have that special gift. Really stupid! And very, very shallow and superficial.
If it was not for Cate Blanchett's engaging performance, I would give this movie a much lower rating than 5 out of 10.
The film starts out fine, introducing the characters one by one, and aptly creating the atmosphere of a typical southern urban town. But somewhere in the course of the story, the film seems to lose its pace. Annie has dreams and visions of the murdered woman's corpse and whereabouts, which are supposedly meant to be shocking and frightening, but most of the time they are just silly and annoying. Hilary Swank is utterly bad and unwatchable in a very passive and uninteresting role, you wonder why she agreed to play such a character after her Oscar win that year. And the last third is so unbearably predictable, it's completely unbelievable, that Annie does not realize the situation, especially when she is assumed to have that special gift. Really stupid! And very, very shallow and superficial.
If it was not for Cate Blanchett's engaging performance, I would give this movie a much lower rating than 5 out of 10.