It gives, first of all, a hefty central role to the deserving and appreciative but not effusive Cate Blanchett -- that of a widowed backwater Georgia fortune-teller ("I don't call myself that") with three young boys -- and it gives vivid and well-differentiated surrounding roles to the varyingly worthy Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Hilary Swank, Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, Gary Cole, J.K. Simmons, Chelcie Ross, Michael Jeter, and Kim Dickens (impeccable as a rhinestone mantrap). The circuitous plot construction centers chiefly on the heroine's harassment by a philandering redneck wife-beater (to whom she's a "Satan-worshipper" and "no better than a Jew or nigger") and her assistance of the scoffing sheriff on a missing-persons case, and the eventual convergence of these. The demands of the Southern Gothic tradition, the generic spook story, and the generic detective story are nicely balanced -- the generic ingredients effectively isolated and intensified in their reduced dosage. The sporadic psychic visions, never a threat to take over the movie, are imaginatively and creepily realized by filmmaker Sam Raimi. And if in the later stages the script (co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, who worked for Raimi as an actor on A Simple Plan) turns mechanical and transparent, it escapes the parallel pitfalls of undermotivation and overtricksiness. The shortcomings are nowhere so great as to cancel gratitude. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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