Gothika
Review by Lee Shoquist for Reel Movie Critic
HH
Cast
Halle Berry	Dr. Miranda Grey
Robert Downey, Jr.	Pete Graham
Penelope Cruz	Chloe
Charles Dutton	Dr. Douglas Grey
Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. A thriller. Rated R, for violence, nudity, sexual torture, language. Running time: 95 minutes.

In the loony, loopy new thriller "Gothika," Halle Berry plays Dr. Miranda Gray, a psychiatrist at a secluded women's prison for the criminally insane. As the film opens, she's struggling with a violent, manic patient (Penelope Cruz) and suffering emotional exhaustion. When a raging rainstorm drives her off the road and a vengeful ghost gets her mixed up in murder and incarcerated at the same penitentiary, she calls upon the supernatural to help her catch a killer and unravel a luridly sleazy and unexpected mystery.

Of course we know she's a woman wrongly accused, but the plot-involving ghosts, mental illness, hallucinations and numerous escapes-is too serpentine for its own good, and somebody forgot to write an interesting character at the center of this mumbo-jumbo muddle. For much of the film, we're as in the dark as Berry is about what's really happening, and as "Gothika" substitutes ghostly special effects in lieu of real scares the narrative confusion doesn't draw us in, but fails to engage.

How convincing is Berry as a psychiatrist? Just fine, actually. And though the character requires her to maintain fever-pitch hysteria for much of the film's running time, she's more than up to it, being beaten bloody several times and using all manner of physical abilities at least as much as in her over-celebrated turn in "Die Another Day."

French director Mathieu Kassovitz, himself an actor ("Amelie") and established director, who gave us the far superior, similarly complex and creepy, foreboding serial killer film "The Crimson Rivers,"

is a director who knows well how to create an air of atmospheric dread. But in this case, the screenplay doesn't do him any favors by giving us no one to really root for. The characters are all fairly colorless, and when we feel anything for anyone here-it's Berry the actress, not Berry the doctor.

The ho-hum supernatural elements aren't really scary and seem culled from other sources from "The Ring" to "What Lies Beneath." Still, there's gusto to the film that almost ignites when Berry, beaten and on the run, takes control of the film. She's so physically convincing in the role-Kassovitz focuses on her agility rather than her shapely physique-that we root for her resourcefulness even when the film falls apart around her.

"Gothika," superbly designed and shot, generates some tension from its stylish set and gloomy, foreboding cinematography. But unlike "The Crimson Rivers" and the best thrillers, most of the shocks here are garden-variety "boo" scares and have nothing to do with real suspense.

It's an okay film with some tense moments, some wild and unbelievable contrivances and a dollop of sleaziness, all held together with solid direction and little conviction. Kassovitz has proven he's a director to watch. It's "Gothika" that convinces me he's slumming this time out.