GOTHIKA
by Anne Gilbert

It’s oddly refreshing to see a movie that is not bogged down with pesky issues of motivation, logic or plausibility, and that is so convinced more is more that it has no idea when to stop. This is clearly the case with Gothika, a psychological horror film so preposterous, so baffling, that it might just be the best comedy since Gigli.

To be fair, the first hour or so merely rates a mediocre-to-bad. In it, Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry), a bright and sleek psychiatrist at a women’s prison, has her drive home hampered by heavy rains and ominous lightening (which has never happened in the opening of a horror film before, ever). Miranda swerves off the road to avoid hitting a girl who suddenly appears before her car, and the next thing she knows, she is a patient in her own hospital, accused of murdering her husband and considered by every one of her former colleagues to be a complete nutcase. Miranda must now figure out what happened to her husband while convincing the doctors -- not to mention her former patients (including the aggressive, delusional Chloe, played by Penélope Cruz) -- of her sanity.

Never mind the sweeping dismissal of medical and legal protocol that would place an unconscious doctor into her own psychiatric prison, to be treated by a staff who, up until the previous week, were her subordinates. Gothika is apparently operating in a universe where this sort of frivolous rationality does not come into play. I will ignore the fact that this hospital, swanky enough to sport an Olympic-szed pool, is content to light the prisoners with fluorescents that flicker and fade. Evidently, spooky ambiance and chilly settings take priority over the patients’ well being. What I cannot dismiss, however, is that the film's first two thirds are spurred on not only by the supernatural occurrences that keep plaguing poor Miranda, but on her desperate attempts to convince her doctor (Robert Downey, Jr.) that she is not crazy and that there is something strange afoot. Unfortunately, her struggles are hardly riddled with dramatic injustice. Instead, even at her most “lucid,” Berry acts like such a loon that, though I can attest to the veracity of her wild claims, I still support the notion that she should be heavily medicated right up until her trial date. Assuming, of course, that trials even exist in the land of Gothika.

As hard as it may be to believe, this is the best part of the film. The final third quickly degenerates into a laughably bad atrocity of filmmaking. It switches gears and becomes an otherworldly detective film wherein the previously logical and no-nonsense woman follows clues from the beyond, fueled by an enigmatic, stringy haired young girl who may or may not be the vision of a girl killed in particularly heinous circumstances. And I did not just save some time and cut and paste that last bit from a plot summary of The Ring, though I could have easily done so. Gothika has likewise ripped off significant portions of What Lies Beneath, but, frankly, neither film is worth extensive analysis. Suffice it to say that the choice of screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez to embrace cliché and discontinuity was bad enough, but his decision to poach so heavily on Beneath shows a serious lapse in judgment. A note to all struggling writers out there: If you choose to, uh, “borrow” from other films, at least make sure that the original is a good one, and not something that is already weak, formulaic and a self-proclaimed “homage.”

My absolute favorite part, though, involves one of the messages from the “beyond.” The phrase “Not Alone” turns up again and again—at the hospital, at the crime scene, on Miranda, as some key to solving this mystery, and at three separate points, Miranda states “That’s what ‘not alone’ means!” But each time, it means something entirely different. Perhaps Berry is thrilled to be flexing her Academy Award winning acting chops by managing each time with a straight face, or for the opportunity to insist “I’m not delusional -- I’m possessed!” with earnest conviction, but in reality, there is nothing about this film for which she should feel anything but shame.

Director Mathieu Kassovitz, so far from his gritty Hate, or his charming acting turn in Amélie, has flickering moments of genuine creativity. His deft zipping through barriers and creative distortion of imagery, however, are hardly enough to offer salvation; rather, they are simply flashes of competence in an otherwise appalling film. If he truly wishes, as he has stated, to give up his other pursuits and focus solely on directing, he needs to establish much more discerning taste in material. Downey should, by this time, be used to being much better than the work in which he appears (witness his current The Singing Detective, in addition to most of his other films, for further proof), and, frankly, his career has survived much worse. Berry and Cruz, on the other hand, need to finely tune their selection process if they intend to stay on the top tier of Hollywood actresses. If they keep plumbing the depths of the barrel for material, their clout will be a thing of the past, and deservedly so.

©2003 Anne Gilbert
CineScene