Gothika

11/22/03 - Review

Halle Berry stars as psychologist Miranda Grey in the suspense thriller, Gothica.  Dr. Miranda Grey is at the top of her game and respected by all of her peers in the psychiatric ward at the Woodward Penitentiary for Women.  Her husband, Douglas Grey (Charles S. Dutton), also works there as the chief administrator.  Day in and day out she treats mentally disturbed patients like Penelope Cruz’s character, Chloe.  Chloe tells the good doctor about being filled by Satan’s fire but Miranda just passes it off as her embellishing her rape.  After she kisses her husband goodbye one evening because he has some work to do, she stays late to work on the Chloe case.  Meanwhile her close colleague, Pete Graham (Robert Downy Jr.), continues his subtle, friendly advances.

Later that night, Miranda is forced to take a detour on the way home which ends up being the start of a horrific nightmare.  She crashes into ditch after seeing a young girl standing in the middle of the road.  When she awakes, she is on the other side of the glass: the mentally unstable side.  She learns that her husband has been murdered quite violently and she is the main suspect.  Now, Pete Graham is forced to be her doctor even though he still has adulterous feelings for her.  Miranda sees visions of the girl and tries to tell her visions to Pete but he just sees them as a last cry for help.  Pete and everybody else believe that she is on her way to being insane. 

Miranda is now on her own since no one except herself believes that she did not kill herself.  For some reason she is seeing these visions of a strange girl but the answers do not appear easily.  She believes she is possessed but she doesn’t know if it is for the right or wrong reasons.  She knows that "Not Alone" has been inscribed in her arm and the murder scene so it must have do to with something.   Miranda must find out the truth quickly because the longer she remains the patient the quicker she will become insane like her once patient, Chloe.   

If you have seen the movie, The Ring, then you have seen this movie too.  Gothika, though suspenseful at times, is another movie in the long line of coy cats that have come out of Hollywood lately.  Much like The Ring, a dead girl’s soul inhabits a living person in hopes of bringing her killers to justice.  Been there, done that. 

Gothika also suffers from being so predictable that the twists and turns do not really seem to entertain.  It was really easy to figure out who the killers were.  Even the times when the audience was startled could still be seen coming a mile away.   The movie has no value except to copy off of a better movie and doing a worse job at it too.

The movie consists of a great cast on paper, but as a group do little to promote the movie.  Halle Berry played a convincing Doctor and a good crazy person.  Unfortunately for her, the character could not hold its own against the rest of the story.  She is a good actress but she just picked the wrong role.

Robert Downy Jr. stayed out a jail long enough to star in another movie but he was way underused.  Little was done with the side plot of the feelings he had with Halle’s character or his true motives in the movie.  I actually thought he was a baddie at one point.  Downy Jr. seemed to be on autopilot as well, especially when Halle was placed in the sanitarium. 

I do not know what Tom Cruise sees in Penelope Cruz.  She seemed way out of place in the movie.  She can’t act and I can’t stand her childish accent. 

The supporting cast consisted of some good small name actors but the story was so bad that it didn’t really matter.  They did their jobs and that is about it.

I liked the score that was picked for the movie. It really gave a nice claustrophobic feel to it, especially with the prison-liking setting.  But in the end, the movie is clichéd with past horror ideas and themes. 

If you liked The Ring, then stay away because it’s a bad copy cat.  Sure, you’ll probably jump but in reality there is nothing to this movie.  Save your money and the 90 minutes. 

Grade

What do you think?