Comments on: Gothika (2003)

By: damian

damian — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

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.
I 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.

By: Paco

Paco — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: damian

damian — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

As 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.
It’s a shame the whole thing is so silly, but there are good points to this film.