Gothika tries to be both a psychological thriller and a ghost story.
Instead of complimenting each other, the two genres seem strangely at odds.
It's as if Girl, Interrupted used elements of The Ring and The Sixth Sense simply to get audiences squirming and screaming.
Scream and squirm you will because director Mathieu Kassovitz knows all the tricks.
Music swells, hands reach out of shadows, creepy voices whisper in darkened corners and phantoms appear out of nowhere.
As effective as these moments are, his gimmicks are not enough to conceal the trite plotting devices in relative newcomer Sebastian Gutierrez's screenplay.
Miranda Grey (Halle Berry), a psychiatrist at an institution for the criminally insane, wakes up one morning as a patient.
Her former colleagues claim she butchered her husband, the prison's head of psychiatry, on a recent dark and stormy night.
Earlier on the day of the alleged crime, patient Chloe Sava (Penelope Cruz) tells Miranda the most terrifying thing conceivable is knowing the truth but having no one believe you.
Miranda refuses to believe the devil was raping Chloe nightly in her cell and simply prescribed anti-psychotic drugs.
Now Miranda is dealing with demons and ghostly visitors of her own -- maybe there is some terrifying truth to Chloe's claims.
Miranda is getting her own share of sedatives and physical restraints from Peter Graham (Robert Downey Jr.), who's been promoted to Miranda's former post.
Every psychological thriller needs a character who is the opposite of what they seem, so there are numerous hints that Graham may be drugging Miranda as revenge for spurning his romantic advances.
There are some rather dark and seedy reasons for Miranda's amnesia and it's going to take a ghost to expose them.
Gothika works best when the supernatural elements of the plot could just be part of Miranda's psychosis.
When the ghost begins opening her cell and causing electrical blackouts all over town just to help lead Miranda to some horrifying truths, Gothika becomes less interesting and less creepy.
The most compelling thing about Gothika is Berry's performance.
She treats all this schlock as though it's heady dramatic stuff.
She invests more in the material than it warrants.
Her terror at being sedated and restrained is palpable and contagious.
Downey, in what is a remarkably restrained performance, is suitably ominous as is Cruz in Chloe's attempts to warn Miranda about the evil that lurks in the hearts of men and the hallways of the institution.
The two major twists in Gothika are not nearly as shocking as Kassovitz and Gutierrez would hope for.
Gothika is a gothic ghost story that's not nearly as scary as it should because it tries to be classier than its source material.
(This film is rated 14A)
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