Review
GOTHIKA
Starring Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr. and Penelope Cruz
Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
Opens Friday, November 21
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The assumption about psychotics is that they will swear they’re not crazy and, to their unfortunate detriment, appear even more insane with each denunciation. Gothika reminds us that bad psychological thrillers are also prone to their own form of denial.
In this muddled and ridiculous Halle Berry vehicle, the filmmakers try to maintain logic by having their browbeaten heroine repeatedly announce what a rational person she is. The sublimation never works. With each announcement the film slips deeper into a mess of paranormal dribble and unintelligible psychobabble.
Structured around an idiotic delineation of psychoanalysis that would make an episode of Dr. Phil look enlightening, Gothika begins with a reminder that sometimes denial is a necessary part of recovery. Shocking. Berry stars as the "brilliant" Dr. Miranda Grey, a detached shrink who counsels inmates at a women’s psychiatric penitentiary run by her husband (Charles S. Dutton). After a bizarre evening, during which she has a strange encounter with a woman she nearly hits on a deserted road, Miranda wakes up to discover she’s the newest inmate on her ward. Her flirtatious co-worker, Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.), arrives to tell her she’s the chief suspect in the brutal murder of her husband. Miranda knows she didn’t do it, but she can’t remember what happened to her or where she was.
As Miranda struggles to maintain her sanity, she begins to unravel a mystery that links her own misfortunes to a series of paranormal activities involving a patient she once counselled (played by Penelope Cruz), who is now her fellow inmate.
Set in a dark netherworld we’re told is Connecticut, the film takes place almost entirely within the eerie, gothic eyesore called the Woodward Penitentiary for Women. Gothika displays a world trapped in poorly drawn small-town Americana. The seemingly quaint New England landscape that surrounds the foreboding institution is revealed in only two scenes, but we quickly learn that the residents are close-knit and down-home kind of folks. In an early scene the sheriff instructs Miranda to avoid a roadblock by taking the bridge he and her husband fish off. Later on, this same kind of local good will is displayed when one of the prison guards tosses Miranda his car keys so she can escape. Of course. It’s gotta be small town U.S.A. when the missing inmate at the local penitentiary isn’t nabbed while tooling around town in the prison guard’s Buick. Ultimately, this is indicative of all the problems with the film – sloppiness.
Nothing quite fits together in Gothika, from the characters who are thinly drawn and uninteresting to the plot that unwisely tries to meld a ghost story with a psychologically driven mystery. Furthermore, the pressing mindfuck at hand never delves into any remotely interesting questions about perception, sanity or the paranormal. Without any ground to stand on, the script is reduced to a barrage of unintentionally hilarious one-liners. In one scene, Berry’s desperate patient barks at Downey’s skeptical doc, "I’m not deluded, I’m possessed."
Maybe the creative team behind Gothika should try to do Scary Movie 4 for their next project. |
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