Granted, my knowledge in this area is limited, but I believe each Tarot card has a specific meaning and that psychics divine messages from the card faces and the order in which they are dealt. So what insight can be drawn from basic geometric symbols? Surely this practice must be a violation of the Supernatural Rules of Order. After all, if you can do readings from ESP test cards, why not flash cards? Or recipe cards? Or baseball cards ("Ah, it's a Sammy Sosa! You will have a life of accomplishment, humility and lucrative endorsement deals.")

If my misgivings are sound, then Annie is either making a big mistake or she's not very bright. The latter may be the case, as Annie does some astonishingly stupid things later in the film.

The film, by the way, is the latest from Sam Raimi, who previously offered the taut thriller, "A Simple Plan." Once again, Raimi proves adept at assembling a strong cast and establishing an evocative atmosphere. Unfortunately, the similarities between the two movies end there. "The Gift" is an anemic throwaway that starts strong but fades fast, due to a main plotline that offers few surprises and a secondary story that is handled ineptly.

Shot from a dusty script by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, the production follows Annie as she gets into a heap of trouble by suggesting that battered wife Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank) should seek help. Shortly after, Valerie's husband, Donnie (Keanu Reeves), explodes into Annie's house and demands that she mind her own business, while accusing her of worshipping Satan. Clearly, we do not need to ask Jeff Foxworthy if this man might be a redneck.

In addition to Donnie and Valerie, Annie's circle of friends also includes a mentally disturbed auto mechanic named Buddy Cole (fans of "The Kids in the Hall" may insert their wisecracks here) with serious parental issues, not to mention problems respecting other people's personal space. Giovanni Ribisi does fine work with the role, managing to make the character simultaneously creepy and endearing. The resolution of Buddy's grim storyline is one of the most disappointing parts of the film. Early on, his circumstances are given almost as much screen time as Valerie's, but he quickly fades into the background. His core situation is wrapped up early and abruptly in a scene so poorly filmed that a key revelation becomes just one more element in a sea of mayhem.

Raimi and company seem far more interested in getting and keeping Annie in as much danger as possible. During a rare social outing, she encounters oh-so-polite school principal Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear) and his hot-to-trot fiancé, Jessica King (Katie Holmes, vamping it up terribly and exposing her breasts for the first time onscreen). Annie postpones buying wedding gifts when she spots Jessica screwing smarmy lawyer David Duncan (Gary Cole) in the coatroom.

(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD) Jessica disappears that night and frustrated cops eventually (and reluctantly) turn to Annie, who gets a vision of a female body submerged in a pond. Said pond belongs to (surprise!) Donnie, who ends up convicted of her murder. Case closed? Of course not. Subsequent visions convince Annie that Donnie is not the killer, so what does she do? She races to share her revelation with a member of the tiny pool of suspects. If only the woman had spent less time on psychic readings and more time boning up on "Movie Clichés 101." I won't reveal any more. Suffice to say that the story builds to a cheesy "Twilight Zone" style climax (END SPOILERS).

The positives in "The Gift" come mostly from the actors. Blanchett, Swank and Kinnear are all solid, with Ribisi even better, but the movie belongs to Keanu Reeves, who delivers a remarkably strong performance. Trite though they may be, scenes of him terrorizing Annie provide the only truly scary moments in the film.

Actually, there is one moment even scarier. It's the realization that a script this lame actually was made into a feature film.