In an interview with Eon magazine, Sam Raimi, director of the upcoming supernatural thriller The Gift, said that the scares in the movie are based from reality.

"We tried to make the film as suspenseful as possible, and I recognized when I read the fine script that it was very frightening and upsetting, which I think was attributed to the very real characters," Raimi said. "It took time to build them, and to have Cate Blanchett in the lead role further helped the reality. This is a real person you're watching. When anything happens after that, it becomes frightening, even if it's a phone call, and there's no one the other end."

The lovely Blanchett stars as a small-town psychic who is called in by police to help find a missing girl who is played by Katie Holmes. The script for the film is written by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton. Other stars in the film include Keanu Reeves as an abusive husband, Hilary Swank, Greg Kinnear and Giovanni Ribisi. Speaking of Hilary Swank, has anyone seen the cover to his month's issue of W? Damn she's hot...

"Cate interviewed with a lot of psychic card readers and tried to understand the process that they go through," Raimi said. "When it came time to photograph Cate's character having these visions, it was important we didn't show normal tarot cards and pretend they had some meaning to them, as I saw in a lot of films. When you have Cate Blanchett, you want her to communicate what she sees. It was best we used bland, meaningless symbols, and Cate would perform what she saw. We did that throughout the script. She was a great collaborator. If she didn't understand something in the script, she'd ask me. If I had an answer, I would give it to her. If we realized we hadn't figured out that moment, we'd work on it."

The Gift opens in limited release in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 20 and goes into wide release on Jan. 19, 2001.

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