I'm sorry, but the South is a scary fucking place. The misty swamps, the murderous rednecks . . . If you choose to live down there, I'll watch you enduring some grueling supernatural terror, but I ain't gonna feel sorry for you. Anyone who lives down there deserves what she gets.

The latest tale of horror from that Boschian underworld beneath the Mason-Dixon line is The Gift, written by Billy Bob Thornton & Tom Epperson and directed by suspense master Sam Raimi. In it Cate Blanchett plays Annie Wilson, a widowed mother of three who supports her family by giving psychic readings to her neighbors in the small town of . . . eh, I forget what it was called. Blixburg? Buxberry? Blucktown? Something small and Southern. That's all I remember.

Anyway, one day Annie meets the principal of her son's high school (Greg Kinnear) and his fiancée, the town slut Jessica (Katie Holmes, who spends a gratifying amount of the film topless). Annie has a terrible vision of doom for this unlikely pair. And sure enough, Jessica soon turns up missing.

The suspects are numerous: there's violent redneck Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves), who knows Jessica in the biblical sense; his jealous battered wife Valerie (Hilary Swank); town nut Buddy Cole (Giovani Ribisi), who's obsessed with a pornographic Rosebud in the form of the blue diamond; the cuckolded husband, of course; Jessica's father, whose social standing is at stake from his daughter's whorish activities; and even the local prosecutor, who's another of Jessica's boy toys. Or maybe it's someone from a little lower down on the credits list . . .

Sam Raimi wrings out of this story the sort of creepiness that the lesser, mannered What Lies Beneath aspired to. It also has going for it an amazing cast, particularly Blanchett and Ribisi. It's almost a really really terrific film.

So what's wrong with it? Well, typical for a film like this, with a murder and a finite number of suspects.: the ending just ain't surprising. In fact, anyone who's seen any film, ever, will know who did it long before that person's identity is revealed. Hell, the only reason I thought that person didn't do it is because they were such an obvious choice to be the killer.

Ah, well. Even with the predictable ending, the picture does manage to squeeze in one last neat supernatural twist. And through its duration it's good and creepy and entertaining. So I can safely recommend the picture for those who like thrillers. You might just want to turn off your brain in the last act, though, so you can try to be surprised.