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Some people may recognize the name of director Mathieu Kassovitz from the title roll of Amélie, in which he played Audrey Tatou’s love interest. Some may even know he is a well-known director in homeland France, with La Haine being one of the best titles he has directed. When production company Dark Castle decided to bring Kassovitz to the States for Gothika, one might assume they wanted him for his creative European input. Something similar to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, for Alien: Resurrection and -hey- Amélie. Well, you could see it coming. Dark Castle is known for making standard cliché horror movies and squeezed out everything that was creative in Kassovitz, to direct a standard, non-surprising horror movie that can better be categorized as a psych-thriller, without truly being psychological and without being thrilling.
Miranda Grey, played by Halle Berry (who seems to accept every part that is offered to her these days), is a psychiatrist working in a mental institution for female convicts. She is married to the head of the institute, making a rather peculiar couple. One day she drives home in terrible weather conditions and is forced to take a detour. There she almost crashes into a girl, standing on the road, looking as though she is from another planet. One scene later we see Miranda sitting in an isolation cell. She has no idea what has happened and she is extremely violent. It turns out she has killed her husband, something of which she has no recollection at all. So, the doctor has become the patient.
The plot looks like an interesting starting point for an interesting film. Unfortunately, the hour that follows is one filled with clichés. It is hard being original these days, I know, but some scenes and events are so obvious you don’t have to be a screenplay scholar to predict what is going to happen. Gothika desperately tries to find a path between genres. It is not a horror movie, nor is it a psychological thriller. It is a bit lame to bring up all kinds of parallels to similarly themed movies, such as The Sixth Sense and The Ring, but the viewer has no choice but to compare. Everything we see in Gothika is something we have seen elsewhere and better. Berry acts on routine, supporting actor Robert Downey Jr.’s part is acceptable, but some of the other cast members are faceless robots, including Penélope Cruz, as one of Miranda’s former patients.
I believe one cannot even blame Kassovitz for all of these things. He was probably tied to the restrictions of Dark Castle, that was too focused on making a smooth and slick film. Even despite the clichés such as poorly lit prison cells, lots of rain and thunder and several plot changes, Gothika is bad, but it could have been much worse. It is one of those movies you can rent on a rainy day. A movie you can watch and that is scraped off your cortex five seconds after the end credits roll over the screen.
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Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr.
Official Website
‘Gothika’ runs 98 minutes and is now showing.
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Arjan Welles (213 posts)Arjan Welles - law graduate. I work at a bank, I work as a film critic for Dutch and English media. My favorite directors are David Lynch, David Fincher, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino. I love arthouse over blockbusters.
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I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this was that bad. I’ll stand up and admit that I’m a big horror fan, but I have been more than dissappointed with most of the stuff that Dark Castle has produced over the past few years.
Comment by damian — Mon April 19, 2004 @ 12:42I found it intruiging that Robert Zemeckis was one of the producers of this film, because I can see similiarities between this and his (Absolutely dire) What Lies Beneath. To be honest, I preferred this.
Robert Downey Jr. is as watchable as ever, although he’s not really given much to do. Halle Berry is pretty good and Penelope Cruz is downright awful. I found myself quite entertained by the film, although (as usual with Dark Castle films) the last twenty minutes are a bit silly. Like Identity, the psychological aspects of the story try to make the film seem more intelligent and high brow than your standard teenage slasher film, but it doesn’t work particularly well.
What does work, I think, is Kassovitz’s trademark flowing camera. The camera never stands still and I think Gothika contains some of his most stylish visual work since La Haine. Sure the whole thing is about as believable as Oliver Reed playing Farrah Fawcett but it passes by quite nicely and there are a couple of jumpy moments along the way. It beats the hell out of What Lies Beneath anyway.
This was crap. Seeing the actors and material, that is the only conclusion one can make.
Like said, to many references to movies like What Lies Beneath, The Sixth Sense, Stir Of Echoes, Identity, etc. Only this is less smarter than most of them, which takes away the whole point of the movie. Once the ‘secret’ is revealed, we are still treated to a tedious and obligatory epilogue (is what I call the rest of the movie).
I honestly cannot tell the signature of Kassovitz in this. Either he was robbed of his creative freedom or he… nah, won’t even want to think about that one.
Watch Les Rivi’res Pourpres I and you will see him handling thriller/horror sequences.
Sorry, but there is also no comparison with La Haine whatsoever. That’s almost an insult for the latter. I looooove that movie.
Comment by Paco — Tue May 11, 2004 @ 1:07As far as content goes there’s nothing to link La Haine to Gothika, but the stylish visual touches are plain to see. The camera never stops moving in Gothika, the swirling in and out of the cells is stylistically well done. It roams the corridors, it sits in awkward, uncomfortable angles and you can tell that Kassowitz tried to use the camera to intensify certain scenes.
Crimson Rivers is a good film, but his visual style is more reserved in that film, using a lot of slow, long takes. He often focuses on a detail, or a landscape in Crimson Rivers and uses those to entrap the actors in certain scenes, take for instance the opening scene with the dead body in Crimson Rivers and when Jean Reno’s character first enters the Ice cavesand compare that to the way the camera swings in circles around Halle Berry as the hauntings begin to happen. I think the camera techniques Kassowitz used in La Haine are brough back into play here, he’s allowed himself the freedom to make the camera a character again. It disorientates, it makes the viewer nervous because you’re always aware of it and you never know wheree it’s going to lead you.
Comment by damian — Tue May 11, 2004 @ 14:31It’s a shame the whole thing is so silly, but there are good points to this film.