r. Miranda Grey (Berry) is the chief criminal psychologist at the Woodward Penitentiary for Women, where she ministers to the psychological needs of the more disturbed patients.
Like Chloe (Cruz), the haunted young woman who claims that the devil himself has been raping her regularly in her cell. Dr. Grey tells her husband, Doug (Charles S. Dutton), who happens to be the penitentiary's chief administrator, that she finds it hard to understand what Chloe is trying to tell her. "Right now, my mind is running on empty," she says.
On the way out, Grey's colleague, Dr. Pete Graham (Downey), offers her an umbrella to avoid the pouring rain. Grey demurs.
Driving through the deluge, Grey notices the road washed out. Sheriff Ryan (John Carroll), Doug's hunting buddy, directs her to an old covered bridge farther along.
When Grey crosses the bridge, she sees what appears to be a young woman standing smack in the middle of the road. Screaming, Grey pulls the wheel hard to the right, running off the road. Climbing out, she walks back to the woman. "Are you all right?" she calls, rain cascading down her face. The woman, dressed in rags and covered with scratches, says nothing. When Grey touches her, flames erupt, and ...
Grey awakes with a start. She is lying on a bed in a cell in the maximum security ward of Woodward. Gone are her tailored clothes and carefully coiffed hair. Graham comes in. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asks. Then he tells her: She's been there for three days. And she's committed a horrible crime—one about which she has no memory.
Lots of mystery but little meaning
Gothika, from producers Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis, is their Dark Castle production company's attempt at a high-class spookfest, after successful low-budget horror films such as House on Haunted Hill and Ghost Ship. With Oscar winner Berry in the lead role, aided by serious actors such as Cruz and Downey, Gothika has the pedigree. But under Kassovitz's direction, Gothika fails to rise above its generic ghost-story roots, though the French helmer strives mightily for the atmospheric creepiness of one of his role models, Dario Argento.
The fault, as in most movies, lies in the script. It is far too sketchy in filling in the questionable psychology behind Berry's Grey, and the rest of the characters are even thinner. This despite the film's billing primarily as a psychological drama. What weight the characters achieve is a credit to the generally excellent acting in evidence, particularly Cruz's.
Beyond that, the film contains little suspense and is rife with implausibilities and abrupt character shifts. What anxiety Kassovitz manages to crank up has to do with the appearance of the ghost itself, though she pops in and out whenever the pacing threatens to slow down too much. And the story contains enough logical holes to drive an ambulance through.
But fault can be spread around. Kassovitz demonstrates that he's never met a camera move he doesn't like, and the film's comfortable budget apparently didn't have room for a tripod. The movie is over-directed in other ways as well, from the gimmicky lighting to the elaborate sets, and it all adds a portentousness to the movie that it doesn't deserve. By the time the revelations begin tumbling forth in the third act, it takes a lot to care.
