...prone to loud noises, loud music, and red herrings for its scare tactics. Before we know it, cheap thrills are substituted for serious plot development.
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Here's the thing: As of this writing, Warner Brothers had not yet released John Huston's 1951 Humphrey Bogart-Katharine Hepburn classic, "The African Queen" on DVD, not even in a regular edition, let alone a special edition. Yet it isn't six months after they release their regular-edition DVD of the mediocre 2003 horror flick "Gothika" that they issue this two-disc Special Edition. Life is unfair. Live with it.
The first question that struck me about "Gothika" before I even watched it was the title. I didn't know what it meant. Oh, I knew "gothic," defined by my Random House Unabridged Dictionary as, among other things, "a style of literature characterized by a gloomy setting, grotesque, mysterious, or violent events, and an atmosphere of degeneration and decay." Then I was reminded of Attica State Penitentiary in upper New York, scene of the infamous prison riots of the early seventies. Putting two and two together, I guessed the movie might be a dark, gothic tale set in the gloomy setting of an old, dilapidated prison. I wasn't far wrong.
What I didn't count on were the ghosts.
Clearly, "Gothika" was inspired by the success of "The Ring" the year before it. The similarities in tone, mood, music, and subject matter are too obvious to overlook. Yet, where "The Ring" took a preposterous idea and made it credible, "Gothika" takes a credible idea and makes it preposterous. This is not to suggest that "Gothika" is entirely unlikable, the first half of the movie being quite effective, but it goes downhill fast from there. It's as if the screenwriter, Sebastian Gutierrez, had a great starting point for a horror story, built up its exposition, then had nowhere to take it.
Halle Berry stars as a psychiatrist, Miranda Grey, who works in the mental ward of a maximum-security penitentiary. The gimmick is that shortly after the movie opens, she winds up a patient in her own hospital. How she got there, why she's there, and what she tries to do about it make up the movie's plot line. I had no trouble accepting Ms. Berry as a doctor; she's a fine actress. Nor did I have trouble accepting the typical horror-flick conventions of the gloomy, old building with its dimly lit corridors or Miranda's falling prey to disaster on a dark and stormy night. Indeed, I've come to expect and appreciate the traditions of good, B-grade chillers. What I would have liked was more a rational consistency in the story.
Miranda's husband, Douglas Grey, played by Charles Dutton, is a fellow doctor at the prison. They make an odd couple. He appears to be twice her age and five times her size. But love conquers all, I suppose. Besides, he's not in the picture more than a few minutes before he's summarily dispatched. You see, Miranda is driving home during the aforementioned stormy night when she very nearly hits a girl in the middle of the road. Stopping to assist her, Miranda is horrified to see the young woman self-immolate right in front of her eyes, at which point Miranda blacks out. When she awakens, she's locked in her own looney bin, accused of chopping up her husband with an axe!
Miranda now gets to see things from the inside, a perspective she never had the luxury to experience before. Penelope Cruz plays a former patient of Miranda's, now a fellow inmate, who thinks she's being repeatedly raped by the devil. Poor Ms. Cruz, along with the rest of the supporting cast, does her best, but the role is a dead-end. We think her character is going to be pivotal or elaborated in some way, but it isn't. Her one good line is "You can't trust someone who thinks you're crazy," because it becomes an important story element later on. Other than that, there's not a lot of need for her presence. Miranda's attending physician is Pete Graham, played by the excellent Robert Downey, Jr., and he, too, gets a juicy role for a limited time. Then, like the rest of the players, he practically disappears. The others in the cast are equally ignored: Bernard Hill as Phil Parsons, the head of the hospital facility; John Carroll Lynch as Sheriff Ryan, the murdered man's best friend; and Kathleen McKey as the young apparition who continues to appear to Miranda, but who says nothing.
Once the setup is complete, director Mahieu Kassovitz ("The Crimson Rivers") paces the first thirty minutes or so quite well and fashions a solid sense of morbid atmosphere; but, then, the movie starts to deteriorate. It gets repetitious; more gory as Miranda goes through all kinds of abuse, being sliced with the words "Not alone," either by herself or by forces unknown; more bizarre in its camera angles and technical effects; more frenetic in its quick cutting; and more prone to loud noises, loud music, and red herrings for its scare tactics. Before we know it, cheap thrills are substituted for serious plot development.
When we're wondering if Miranda is crazy or delusional or seeing spirits, the movie is engrossing. When we're frustrated by no one's believing in her sanity, not her doctor, not even her own lawyer, the movie is engaging. But when we're shown her being chased and followed down the usual paths, the movie becomes trite and mundane, culminating in a totally humdrum climax. When it's over, you'd best not think about it, because if you do, you realize that none of it makes any sense, the gaping plot discrepancies and one's myriad of questions making the whole experience all the more discouraging.
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[release]12494[/release]