In a time where originality has passed us and stories are retold in new ways over and over again it gets harder and harder to come up with something we haven’t seen. That is the job of these screenwriters as they sweat over the screenplays for each new picture before it hits the screen, they have a choice to spend extra time coming up with a new twist on an old tale or they could take the easy route and bite off chunks of stories already told.
Gothika is a prime example of the latter. With shades of The Ring, The Exorcist, The Sixth Sense, and even a bit of Red Dragon this flick takes the Scary Movie approach without the comedy and once originality finally hits the screen it falls flat on its face.
With a drawn out 45 minutes to the opening of the story we finally get to the guts of the film as the distressed Miranda Grey (Berry) finds herself a patient in the psyche ward she was working at only three days ago.
After a freak accident involving a scary little girl in the middle of a rainy road Miranda goes home to cut her husband up into little bits with an axe.
Now she is being treated by a colleague of hers, Dr. Pete Graham (Downey Jr.), who also had a bit of a love interest in the married woman and still shows signs while he is pumping her full of drugs and telling her she is crazy.
Side by side now with one of her most troubled patients, Chloe, played by Penelope Cruz, the one bright spot inside Gothika, she must search to find out what is real and what is paranormal.
While the movie fails as a whole it does manage to freak people out for a good 30 minutes. Using special effects as a source for scares, Miranda is tortured by the ghost of a girl thought to have committed suicide. The camera swoops through glass walls and around Miranda culminating in a freaky scene as she stands behind the frightened woman and the audience gasps like I haven’t seen before, but not even a few frights can explain why a ghost that is supposedly trying to “help” would want to scare the hell out of the person they are trying to get the help from.
But just as the frights get you moderately interested Gothika ends so conveniently that you can no longer take the movie seriously and you have to sit back and laugh.
So many questions were left open at the end that it would take too long to explain and also ruin the ending if you did happen to go and see this one in the theater. My recommendation is save your cash and rent the DVD next Halloween, it will at least quench a thirst for a couple of frights that night.
Check out some exclusive clips from Gothika below. Clips will vary in download time depending on resolution, so be patient.
Clip 1 “Miranda has an unexpected encounter”
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Clip 2 “Miranda finds out what happens when the lights go out”
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