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 Gothika
Starring: Halle Berry, Peneplope Cruz and Robert Downey
Jr
Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz
Rated: R
Bluntly
speaking? Sometimes movies are just stooo-pid! Gothika
is one of them…generic to a fault and so corny you'll be
roaring with laughter a few times - and for a thriller/horror
- that aint a good thing
.
Story (think Dick and Jane Meet the Wereparrot)…Dr. Gray
(Halle Berry) and her husband run a psychiatric ward /penitentiary
for women. It looked like the set of High Anxiety but they
mean business. The women behind its barred windows are dangerously
insane. After a particularly bad "session" with uber-case
Chloe (Penelope " I still can not speak English" Cruz)
Dr. Gray shakes off the day with a quick swim in the catacomb's
Olympic size pool (?) and heads home…
It's
the tell-tale torrential downpour she's meandering through and,
naturally, faster then you can say, "Look out for that walking
dead girl in front of…" she's run off the road by the
pale white bruised and bloodied apparition.
A
couple of classic crescendos from composer John Ottman and viola
we are inside the dreaded penitentiary again, only this time it's
the pretty doctor who is a patient! Du da dum! (<- insert evil
music)
She
apparently went nuts three days before - that rainstorm night
- and chopped her loving husband (Charles S Dutton) into bits.
She has no real memory of it but all the evidence, like a bloody
ax, her bloody foot prints, hand prints etc., put the glass slipper
of identification upon her bony foot.
Even
her closest friends turn on her. They figure in a puff of thunderclouds
she lost her mind.
The
most annoying of the non-believers is Dr. Graham (Robert Downey
Jr). Friends like this one doesn't need…and of curse all
the ward's workers are oblivious to flickering lights and shuffling
entities - until they have to pursue Dr. Gray…then there's
about four hundred running around - their flashlights moving up
and down and all around - you know so it looks all cool through
windows as opposed to like people holding flashlights? Then there's
the incongruency and blatant foreshadowings...Hated this!
The
story ekes and unfolds like a cheap haunted house at the small-town
fair. You know that "ghost" is right behind the door
- but you still jump when it yells "Boo!"
Halle
Berry is one helluva pretty girl...this movie doesn't show ya
that as she spends three fourths of it without make-up and in
hospital issued PJs, but usually. So you'd think she "uglied"
up for a good reason right? Well, this aint it.
I
am not a big fan of Penelope Cruz. Here her character just reinforced
that feeling. She kept begging people to realize she was a sane
woman locked up yet acted like a genuine mad hatter. Pa-lease!
I'd rather not discuss dear Robert Downey Jr. being in this fiasco...thank
you.
Save
your money and buy The Shining if you wanna see a good
ghost movie! And what exactly does "gothika" have to
do with anything???? Gothic is a term used for a style. A very
distinct style of art, architecture and also a genre of writing
- think Shelley's 'Frankenstein' - a style which had nothing to
do with this film. Obviously someone thought, "Yeah, that's
a cool title…no one will notice." Shame on them all.
Snack
recommendation: Thai take out while you watch The Shining
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