Gifted Australian actor, Joel Edgerton, adds director to his already considerable CV, with THE GIFT, a superior suspenser that just keeps giving.

Simon and Robyn have relocated to Los Angeles from Chicago, Simon to embark on a new job and the couple to endeavour to start a family.

Whilst out shopping to feather their new nest they bump into Gordo, a bloke who went to school with Simon years ago. He’s keen to reacquaint and makes quite an emphatic run at reunion by leaving a gift at their front door.

Then he shows up in person with helpful hints about the neighbourhood and inveigles himself into a dinner invitation.

Simon suspects a stalker but Robyn is more sympathetic.

They accept a reciprocal dinner invitation that goes awry.

Carp are killed and a their dog disappears.

Cat and mouse, mouse and cheese, cheese stinks, mouse roars, cat claws.

Will waiting for the stork take their minds off the stalk?!

Joel Edgerton gives us a triple treat, triple threat thriller with THE GIFT. He wrote, he directed and he plays the weird Gordo, with red rinse hair and a visage devoid of joy, as if some unrelenting misery has curdled his feelings.

The script, as well as being a taut, tense suspenser, is a meditation on manipulation, a deliberation on bullying. And the direction teases out the terror that transcends the textbook with its adroit table turning, spot on pace and seat jumping jolts.

Rebecca Hall as Robyn is a revelation, a superb study in the vulnerable and submissive chrysalis rising into strength; domestic coal compressed into a resilient diamond, while Jason Bateman is terrific as the Simon who says Simon says and finds it a struggle when what Simon says is not followed.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Eduard Grau, who teamed with Tom Ford on his directorial debut, A Singe Man and superbly edited by Aussie Luke Doolan who cut Animal Kingdom, THE GIFT is a thriller with a meaty thematic thread, a three-hander of great sophistication, style and substance.