THE GIFT is a single location story from the 1990 season of the TV show MONSTERS. In this one, the action takes place in a log cabin where a couple of kidnappers have taken a young boy for ransom. While there, the boy encounters a mysterious chained-up being in the basement, a being who has special powers of life over death. What follows is an odd, goofy little tale with some choice elements but which overall isn't all that satisfactory.
What I liked most about THE GIFT is its harking back to older horror: the chained-up dude could almost be Lon Chaney Jr. in THE WOLFMAN if you squint a bit. Plus the main elderly kidnapper is the spitting image of Boris Karloff. The child actor isn't too bad, and there are a couple of memorably horrific bits alongside an interesting historical back story, but the actual present-day action of the story is aa little dull leaving this story unfocused overall.
What I liked most about THE GIFT is its harking back to older horror: the chained-up dude could almost be Lon Chaney Jr. in THE WOLFMAN if you squint a bit. Plus the main elderly kidnapper is the spitting image of Boris Karloff. The child actor isn't too bad, and there are a couple of memorably horrific bits alongside an interesting historical back story, but the actual present-day action of the story is aa little dull leaving this story unfocused overall.