When a movie's plot is such that it allows you the time to compare the hairstyle of one of its actors to the rooster cut sported by Rolling Stone Ron Wood, you know the film is in serious trouble. Such is the case with The Gift, written by Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan), a cliché-ridden "supernatural thriller" wherein supporting player Hilary Swank plays (badly) a battered wife with a head of hair that would make Foghorn Leghorn proud. Bad hair, however, is just the least of The Gift's problems.

Ostensibly a trip into Southern Gothic territory, The Gift stars the talented Cate Blanchett (Oscar nominee for Elizabeth) as Annie Wilson, a widowed mother of three in tiny Brixton, Georgia, who helps make ends meet by doing "readings" for her fellow citizens. They pop by, she pulls out a deck of cards decorated with circles, squares and squiggles and-bingo!-she's seeing flashes of what the future holds. This is her "gift," you see, but given that everyone who comes to see her belongs to Hollywood's conception of white trash, you can't help thinking of it as a horrible curse. There's nothing like a vision of rotting flesh to put a crimp in one's day.

The plot kicks into gear when Annie-who, in an increasingly irritating plot turn, spends more time as a dime-store psychotherapist to her clients than as a psychic-advises battered wife Valerie (Swank) to leave her redneck husband Donnie (a bearded, baseball-cap-sporting Keanu Reeves), thereby igniting Donnie's rage. (That he is an obvious psychopath and that she should have run away from him years before is moot-it's that kind of movie.) Soon he is terrorizing Annie and her family. But, this being the South and Donnie not being really all that bad, the police take no action.

The police do take notice, however, when town slut Jessica King, who also happens to be the daughter of the town's wealthiest businessman (as I said, it's that kind of movie) disappears. Jessica's father and her fiancé Wayne (Greg Kinnear), the only normal-seeming person in a film populated by grotesques, convince the police to see if Annie's "gift" might help them find the missing girl. Annie has a dream about where the girl is and, in no time flat, there's an army of cops dredging the pond on-guess who?-Donnie's property (this despite the fact that in the scene immediately previous, the cops were having no truck with that psychic mumbo-jumbo-yes, it's that kind of movie). The body is found, Donnie is arrested and convicted, and Annie utters that famous B-movie line, "We can get on with our lives now," thereby signaling to the audience that the wrong man is in jail and ensuring that mayhem will quickly follow. The real killer should be as obvious as the hair on Hilary Swank's head

While it should also be obvious by now that Billy Bob Thornton deserves to be expelled from the Good Ol' Boys Club for a script that confirms everyone's worst prejudices about "the South," director Raimi is equally guilty. He takes the easy way out by choosing the shock route over the more sophisticated psychological path; every time the plot grinds to a halt he shock cuts to one of Annie's visions and spices it up with a loud whooshing sound. The effect is about as disturbing as someone coming up behind you and yelling "Boo!" in your ear.

With the exception of Blanchett, the less said about the acting the better, although some kind of over-acting award should go to Giovanni Ribisi's seriously screwed up mechanic. He's so full of tics and mumbles as to be indecipherable at times. After it's all (mercifully) over, you're left with one question: does Cate Blanchett really need money this badly?