I don’t think the woman sitting beside me at Gothika took her hands from in front of her face for the entire movie. That’s the sort of film this is – a tense, stylish, atmospheric, skilfully constructed thriller that brings together mystery with the supernatural and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Director Mathieu Kassovitz – as he did with The Crimson Rivers – has combined deft delivery of thrills with a great eye for visually fascinating film, crafting a movie that’s fascinating and scary – a far too uncommon pairing.
The lighting, the music and the careful pacing are as important as the script and the performances, both of which are good. On a few occasions things slide into irritating scary movie cliché, but most of it is so well handled that this isn’t a big concern. And best of all, the obligatory false alarm scary moments are handled with panache.
Halle Berry plays Miranda Grey, a psychiatrist at a facility for the criminally insane. Miranda is smart, but not terribly empathetic. And she’s about to learn a powerful lesson about listening to what troubled people have to say – however screwed-up they may seem. Miranda finds herself suddenly transformed from gatekeeper of the asylum to prisoner in it; she is accused of having committed a terrible crime that she doesn’t remember, and she sets out to figure out what got her here while attempting to keep her sanity in a place that doesn’t exactly encourage a return to mental health.
Like all good mystery/ thrillers, we are kept guessing almost to the end – did Miranda do it? Is she crazy? Can she escape? Do her horrifying visions mean something important? Will they kill her? And who can she trust? The answers come gradually, and while some may consider them overly obvious or excessively far-fetched, my sense is that it works. Sebastian Gutierrez’s story takes a few liberties with the plausible (such as having Miranda incarcerated where she worked), but it mostly holds together remarkably well. And Kassovitz delivers the frights one after another without resorting to an excess of gore.
The acting is solid. Berry manages to pull her demanding role off well; she isn’t entirely convincing as a cerebral psychiatrist, but she sure is good at playing a terrorized but gutsy woman. She keeps us panting along with her as she races to sort it all out before it’s too late. Penelope Cruz is good as Chloe, a troubled inmate who first is Miranda’s patient, and then something of a soulmate as Miranda starts to figure out that there’s more truth to Chloe’s wild stories than there is imagination. Cruz brings a weary defiance to the role. And Robert Downey Jr. manages to put his usual semi-nonchalance to reasonably good use as a fellow psychiatrist who goes from leering friend to oppressor of Miranda, before he opens his eyes and starts to see more of what’s actually happening.
Gothika contains some tremendous frights, assisted by John Ottman’s occasionally overbearing but mostly effective score, and Kassovitz maintains a feeling of dread throughout the entire movie. While he uses what some may consider stylistic excess, the style never overwhelms the story, instead consistently enhancing its creepiness. The production design is very good, right down to disturbing little details like maggots crawling over fruit left sitting on a kitchen counter in a house several days after a murder has taken place there.
While we could do without the film’s final scene, Gothika generally does its job well, delivering thrills and creepiness with a great look and a high-energy Halle Berry performance.
