Haley Joel Osment isn't the only person who sees dead people. In The Gift, Cate Blanchett plays Annie Wilson, a psychic Southern woman visited by the restless spirit of a murder victim. At its best, this film is a spooky, character-driven thriller with a superb performance by Blanchett. Unfortunately, the casting of too many familiar faces sometimes gets in the way of the story, which lacks a completely original punch.

Despite the lack of originality, The Gift gets its energy from its heroine, a strong, almost noble young woman, who denies the pain she feels every day. Annie's pain comes from the loss of her husband to an explosion at the factory where he worked. Ever since, she and her sons have been struggling with dad's absence; Annie's answer to the emptiness is to simply pretend that everything is okay. Besides, she barely has time to deal with her own problems, forced as she is to "read" the future for all the locals in order to support her family.

And these locals are a rag-tag lot to be sure. Among them are Buddy Cole (Giovanni Ribisi), an unpredictable young man who is tormented by horrid memories of his childhood, and Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank), who refuses to leave her redneck husband Donnie (Keanu Reeves), even though he beats her. When Donnie learns that Annie has been telling Valerie to leave him, he calls Annie a witch, threatening her children and claiming that she'll burn in hell for her gift. Yet, Annie can't stop divining; for her, it's as natural as eating or sleeping.

All of the above, though, is really little more than preamble to the central drama and the writers take their own sweet time with it. Indeed, the beginning of the film is so languid that you really have no idea where it's going to take you. Luckily, however, by the time things really start percolating to the surface, you are completely caught up in the mood of this Gothic world. The real story begins when local rich girl and town tart Jessica King (Katie Holmes) goes missing. Her father and her fiancé Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear), a well-respected teacher who is clueless as to Jessica's wild ways, ask Annie to read for them. Annie, who has been having visions of a murder, does her best, but sees nothing concrete.

Finally, though, Jessica's spirit visits her and gives her a nudge in the right direction. This leads Annie to the pond behind Donnie Barksdale's home where the cops find Jessica, naked and very much dead. Donnie is arrested and found guilty of the crime, but, in the tradition of true horror stories, that isn't the end. Annie begins to sense that Donnie isn't the killer and, using her gift, she is forced to discover the truth herself, even though it almost kills her.

Despite the rather run of the mill murder mystery story line, what eventually draws you in are the insidious and incestuous machinations of this Southern community and the mood of instability that permeates the film. Director Sam Raimi is right on the money here, creating a spooky world where each tree is shrouded in Spanish moss and where a sense of danger simmers just beneath the surface of everyday life. Atmosphere counts for a lot here and, while this isn't really a scary movie, it offers up more than its share of truly eerie moments.

The real draw-back, though, is the casting. This is an intimate film that needs to hold onto its sense of intimacy. It is not meant to a blockbuster thriller like Kiss The Girls or a huge horror film like The Haunting. As such, populating the movie with such familiar faces actually takes you out of the story. Although Keanu Reeves does a commendable job as vicious gold ole' boy Donnie, he doesn't fit into this world. The same goes for Greg Kinnear, whose superhero smile seems utterly out of place here. It's not the actors' ability that's at question here, it's their sheer sense of personality.

Despite the moments when you get pulled out of the film, writers Billy Bob Thorton and Tom Epperson keep their script real by never sensationalizing their treatment of the heroine's gift or people's reactions to it. This story could have gone the way of Unsolved Mysteries, making Annie into a weirdo fortune teller with wild visions. Instead, she is portrayed as an all too average woman whose genetic ability to divine the future is just a unique quirk. It's not Annie's ESP that makes her special, it's her ability to feel other's pain and to help them heal. This humanistic theme is at the core of the film, coming full circle in the end when Annie herself gets to heal. As Buddy says to Annie, "you're the soul of this town." Indeed, she is the soul of the movie as well.