Because the settings and characters are different doesn't mean these two films aren't similar and obviously relateable in many other more basic respects. I never claimed all the surface specifics are the same, though as you rightly note the plots hinge on the murder of a young woman in water who somehow is able to contact the living. One isn't a re-make of the other, but both use the same basics of the supernatural thriller.
If you found
The Gift new and mysterious, good for you, I'm glad you could enjoy it. But as should be clear to most anybody who has seen a couple dozen of these types of thrillers, it is obvious from the first twenty minutes exactly who the killer is and who the red herrings are. The cliche elements, a clear example being ridiculously going to the murder scene in the middle of the night with a suspect, are annoying to me if they aren't put in the context of, 'OK, we know this is a silly cliche, but we're doing it anyway'. That's the spirit I get out of
What Lies Beneath, and what I find completely absent in
The Gift.
For some of the many previous entries of Mediums psychically discovering clues to murder, check out
The Eyes of Laura Mars, Black Rainbow, The Sender, The Dead Zone, Dead Again, and
The Medusa Touch. For similar thrillers where the murderer is so obviously 'hidden', check out
Kiss the Girls, The General's Daughter, Jade, Whispers in the Dark, Color of Night, Striking Distance and
Dressed to Kill. That's a sampling off the top of my head, I'm sure I could come up with others. After you watch even just four or five of these types of flicks,
The Gift becomes painfully dull and obvious, clear from the trailer who the killer is and how the plot will develop.
That's why I say if it was done with some level of self-awareness, some kind of parody bult into it, it could have been fun (as
What Lies Beneath was for me). As is, Sam Raimi (who I usually like and respect as a filmmaker) presents
The Gift as if these ideas are brand new, not cliches, but that they should be surprising and thrilling. If you haven't seen a lot of these kinds of movies or put your brain on auto-pilot, I guess it could be. But for me there wasn't even one thing in the narrative that was new.
The Gift's cinematography is nice, some of the effects work well, and the (mostly) good cast does the best with what they're given, but for me personally this was an extremely obvious and witless exercise, therefore extremely disappointing. On the other hand,
What Lies Beneath was just as obvious, but had fun with it, and was much better than I hoped for - a plesant surprise.
And as for Katie Holmes' nudity, there are some (all-too) breif shots of her naked before she is killed that are mixed into that montage at the end. If you carefully navigate through it with a pause button, her very nice bare breasts can be seen as she removes her shirt. God bless modern technology!