Gothika

[NEON MERCURY]

..wondering has anyone heard of this film ??all i know is that it stars Halle Berry and Robert D. Jr.....(possibly a supernatural thriller?????)

MacGuffin you have any info on this ???  HELP!

[MacGuffin]

Release Date: October 24th, 2003

Cast: Halle Berry (Dr. Miranda Grey), Penelope Cruz (Chloe), Robert Downey, Jr. (Dr. Pete Graham), Charles S. Dutton (Dr. Doug Grey), Bernard Hill (Dr. Phillip Parsons), Dorian Harewood, John Carroll Lynch, Bronwen Mantel

Director: Mathieu Kassovitz (this is the English-language debut of the director of Hate, The Crimson Rivers, Cafe au Lait)

Screenwriter: Sebastian Gutierrez (cowriter of Judas Kiss; also has The Big Bounce scheduled for this fall, and The Paperboy in development)

Premise: A criminal psychologist (Berry) awakens to find herself a patient in the very same mental institution in which she works, with no memory of the murder of her husband (Dutton) that she's accused of committing. As she tries to regain her memory and convince her coworkers of her innocence, a vengeful spirit uses her as an earthly pawn... which only further convinces all involved of both her guilt and her increasingly stead descent into madness and delusion. (Cruz plays one of the other mental patients; Downey plays one of Berry's psychiatrist coworkers; Hill plays the mental institution's top administrator who has replaced her deceased husband in the job).

[NEON MERCURY]

.Looks cool thanks for the info Mac.....

[Ghostboy]

A glimpse: http://www.themoviebox.net/trailers/GOTHIKA/gothika-TVSpot.html

[Banky]

i saw the tv spot during the MTV awards.  Looks pretty good.  It was good to see Penelope again.

[MacGuffin]

[NEON MERCURY]

that poster is up thier w/requiem's poster....cool.....one

[indiana]

hrm...... the movie kind of look like a rip off of "Ringu" (or The ring)

[MacGuffin]

hrm...... the movie kind of look like a rip off of "Ringu" (or The ring)

How so? I don't see a videotape that kills you in "Gothika".

[Cecil]

hrm...... the movie kind of look like a rip off of "Ringu" (or The ring)

my friend said the same thing and i dont understand why. im think its because of the weird stuttery way the ghost walks

[RegularKarate]

my friend said the same thing and i dont understand why. im think its because of the weird stuttery way the ghost walks

which has been done a million time before in million other movies and Marilyn Manson videos.

I don't get what the big hubbub is about this flick, it's clearly a cheese popcorn flick.  I'll watch it, but I don't expect more than like "The Mothman Prophecies" (I haven't actually seen that movie, but that's the first thing that came to mind)

[edison]

What came to my mind when i saw the trailer was that flick with Benning and Downey, the name has escaped me.

[Ghostboy]

That was In Dreams, which started out brilliantly and then went horribly, horribly awry.

RK, Mothman Prophecies is actually quite good. It's not what you'd expect, most likely, and definitely not in the same league as the Dark Castle flicks. I'd recommend it.

Gothika, however, looks a little bland. It'll scare me, just because that kinda thing always does, but it won't 'scare me' scare me (as in unhinge my inner fears and leave me shaking in my seat). It has a higher pedigree than the rest of the Dark Castle movies, though, just because of the cast (go Downey!) and the director.

[ono]

Spoilers possible.

I just saw a sneak preview of this.  Feh.  Sometimes I hate knocking a movie because it's nothing great, but nothing bad, and most of the audience seemed to have a good time.  And the girl I was sitting with was really, really scared the whole time through, so I had the pleasure of comforting her.  You know the deal, arm around her and all.  So that was a plus.  Her leg was shaking pretty much the whole time.  It was kind of cute.  Hehe.

Anyway, yes, the film.  Dialogue at points was cheesy.  Robert Downey, Jr. was so incredibly underused.  Penélope Cruz did a good job acting totally nutso.  Halle sure did act her ass off, but to what end?  The film just turned out to be another one of those jumpy, run-of-the-mill thrillers with the shock tricks directors use to get you to jump.  (And I was especially disappointed that the man behind Nino Quincampoix's character in Amelie didn't have more to offer behind the camera, but the film sure was stylish, I'll give it that.)

The audience I saw the film with didn't help, what with their laughing at inappropriate parts that weren't that particularly funny.  Though when Halle and her husband first kiss in the film, that got a laugh, and yeah, that was inappropriate, too.  Yet still a bit funny in an odd way.  So I guess what I'm saying is if you like Halle, there's something here for you.  But I guess at the end I wanted more of a summation or explanation for the occurences, and I got one, but at the same time I didn't.  Plus, it reeked a bit of a poor-man's Silence of the Lambs.  And, after all that, I have no idea why it's called Gothika.  Only a few stabs in the dark about the "gothic nature" of the revelation near the end.  So there you have it.  **½ (6/10)

[SHAFTR]

I'm going to a free screening of this Thursday night.  I see there is the famous Nudity tag attached, is it Halle or Penelope or some one else?