Review: Gothika (*)

GOTHIKA
A film review by Steve Rhodes

Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****): *


Miranda has no rights. Dr. Miranda Grey is played by Halle Berry, who
overacts with a vengeance In GOTHIKA just like the rest of the cast in this
preposterous picture. One day Miranda is a prison psychiatrist treating
Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz), who thinks she is being raped by the devil, and
the next day Miranda wakes to find herself in a prison mental facility for
the murder of her husband. Where do they send her? Why to the exact same
facility where she used to work and where her dead husband, Dr. Douglas Grey
(Charles S. Dutton), was the head. Even Miranda's lawyer doesn't believe
her. A horror movie with a vengeful ghost, GOTHIKA also stars Robert
Downey Jr. (THE SINGING DETECTIVE) as Dr. Pete Graham, Miranda's old
colleague and now her doctor.



The only question is what to make of this turkey, which falls back on every
horror movie cliché: sudden loud noises, flickering lights, crashing thunder
and pouring rain. Mostly, the movie is stuck in the purgatory between being
merely bad and being laughably bad. But, the last act, filled with one
howler after another, is strictly for laughs, and they are laughs of
derision, not fun.



Mathieu Kassovitz's ridiculous direction is well matched to Sebastian
Gutierrez's cheesy script. "Come on Honey, time to wash away your sins," a
sadistic nurse tells Miranda before the nurse makes her take off her robe
and shower with the rest of the inmates. (By the way, the answer to your
question is, "no." Unlike her overhyped nude scene in SWORDFISH, Berry
shows nothing this time.)



At one point in the narrative, Miranda remarks, "Right now my mind is
running on empty." The writer's mind seemed to have been on it the whole
time.



"Why are you doing this to me?" Miranda screams repeatedly to everyone in
sight. You'll be thinking the same thing.



GOTHIKA runs 1:35. The film is rated R for "violence, brief language and
nudity" and would be acceptable for teenagers.



The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, November 21, 2003.
In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century
theaters.



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