Gothika

Miss Halle Is BERRY Good In This Odd Thriller, Plot-Twister
Miss Halle portrays a prison psychiatrist, Charles S. Dutton her boss, husband & love of her life, Robert Downey, Jr. as her peer/collegue, & Penelope Cruz as an inmate/patient with some schizophrenic delusions of the devil, himself, burning/entering her body.

As it starts - It was a dark & stormy night...

From there things get really creepy & all mixed up. What is true? What is imagined? Who is crazy? Who is not? A dead girl, a tatooed man, an invisible being, blood written messages on a wall, an axe...Lots of really graphic images PLUS totally spooky lighting all add to the experience.

This film has you trying to figure out the plot from the get go & has many "red herrings"... Once the plot is alluded to, however, the film starts to unravel faster and faster to it's eventual, but not totally predictable end.

The only thing that I couldn't figure out is why they titled this movie, GOTHIKA. It is only said a total of ONE time in the whole of the film.

Regardless, this...

A Very Disappointing Film!!
I was really looking forward to watching and liking Gothika, since I enjoy good ghost stories on one hand, and have a soft spot for French directors in general on the other. And being Mathieu Kassovitz's first English language film as a director (the same director who brought us the excellent La Haine and The Crimson Rivers),my expectations were built even more.
But I have to admit that I was sorely disappointed with the film, and this is why,
Although Kassovitz's direction was not bad , the main problem I believe, lies firmly at the hands of screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez (who has directed Judas Kiss and is now writing the remake of the masterpiece The Eye). He managed to write a script that is totally predictable,lacking any originality or a fresh treatement of old plotlines.
In any horror film, there is a moment early on,when the tension starts to build up, gripping the viewer increasingly until the end. I kept looking for that moment in Gothika to start, where I...

GOTCHA! (Kind Of...)
Director Mathieu Kassovitz pours on the atmosphere (literally) in this sci-fi thriller set in a dreadfully gloomy mental institution that needs a serious makeover. It seems to never stop raining or lightning - ever! It's dark and scary and the lights are always on the kaput. Can't someone change those light bulbs! Won't somebody check those darn circuit breakers? Halle Berry acts herself crazy (again, literally), but hey, Halle, lay off that Botox if you want some more facial expressions! Halle sees a beaten woman driving home one (stormy) night and crashes into a tree. She wakes up in the same hospital as a patient and a criminal for killing her husband (her boss). Is she really crazy or is this a plot? Did some coworker inject her with mind-altering drugs? Why is Robert Downing, Jr. playing a smaller role here? Why is he speaking with that weird accent? Did Halle imagine that girl on the road? Oops! - remember "What Lies Beneath? I think it's the same girl! The rest...

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