Gothika
(2003)
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GOTHIKA stars Halle Berry as Dr. Miranda Grey, a psychiatrist who becomes a patient in her own mental hospital after she is accused of murdering her husband (Charles S. Dutton). Grey's only initial memory of the incident involves a chilling encounter with a distraught girl (Kathleen Mackey) on a rain-soaked road. The incarcerated and medicated Grey is now haunted by the same apparition, and she must convince her former colleague Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.) that she is not insane or guilty of murder. Meanwhile, the seemingly mad ramblings of Chloe (Penelope Cruz), one of Grey's former patients, now make more sense, and Grey must throw aside clinical logic to solve the supernatural murder mystery. |
For this overblown horror effort, director Mathieu Kassovitz deploys every cliché in the book — and then moves on to volume two. Halle Berry plays a distinguished psychiatrist who, after a devastating car crash, finds herself incarcerated in her own asylum accused of the bloody murder of her husband. She has no memory of these events and, to make matters worse, is haunted by ghostly images of a young girl. Could there be a connection? As a rule, understatement is always more effective with horror movies, but it's a rule that is ignored here with endless, portentous thunderstorms and pale-faced ghouls that leap out of dark corners. Kassovitz seems happy to mix these clichés with elements pilfered from The Sixth Sense and Ring, among others. The result is mostly ridiculous and — with the exception of a couple of cynically engineered but effective jolts — resolutely unscary.