There are many movies out in theaters now that I want to see. I’ve been able to go to more movies again recently. I’ve been wanting to see Gothika ever since I first saw a preview of the movie. I recently went to see it.
Dr. Miranda Grey was a psychiatrist that worked at a prison mental hospital for women. She had a session with Chloe, a woman who claimed she was raped inside her cell at night. Chloe got a little violent at the end of the session. Miranda stopped by to talk to the doctor in charge, Douglas, who was also her husband. Douglas left to go check on some things at some property they owned and Miranda headed down to her office to work on Chloe’s file. Miranda did some swimming and then left for the day. It was storming when she left. Pete Graham, another doctor on staff, walked Miranda to her car. She had to take a detour on the way home. She saw a young woman standing in the middle of the road, and ran her car off the road to avoid hitting her. Miranda went to check on the girl and then blacked out.
When Miranda woke up, she discovered that she was in a cell in the mental hospital where she worked. She didn’t know how long she had been there or why she was there. Pete showed up to talk to Miranda. He wanted to know what the last thing she remembered was and kept asking her questions about Douglas and their marriage. The last thing Miranda remembered was running off the road and checking on the woman. Pete didn’t seem to believe her about the woman. He finally told her that Douglas was dead and that she had done it. Miranda flipped out a bit over that. Miranda was sure she hadn’t killed her husband. She didn’t think she was crazy even though everyone else did. Some very strange things happened to Miranda in the hospital. Those things just made her look crazier. She wanted to figure out what had happened that night after she tried to help the woman. She tried to get Phil Parsons, another doctor and the man who took over for Douglas, to help her, but he didn’t believe her either. She found out that the woman she had seen had been dead for several years.
CAST
Halle Berry - Miranda Grey
Robert Downey Jr - Pete Graham
Charles S. Dutton - Douglas Grey
John Carroll Lynch - Sheriff Ryan
Penelope Cruz - Chloe
Bernard Hill - Phil Parsons
Matthew Kassovitz - Director
Gothika was released in November of 2003. The movie was 95 minutes long and rated R. This is not a movie for children.
I didn’t think that Gothika was the most original movie I’ve ever seen, but I did enjoy it. I thought it was interesting. There were a few suspenseful moments. There were some things that were added in just to try and make the audience jump, but that is normal for this type of movie. I did think that some things in it were predictable. The plot wasn’t that complicated. I figured out one thing fairly quickly, well before Miranda figured it out, but there were a few other things I wasn’t as sure of. There have been other movies that had ghosts turning up for similar reasons, but I did think that this one was done a little differently. There were things that were like some other movies, but I still enjoyed it. I wasn’t bored by the movie at all.
There was a little bit of mystery to Gothika. Miranda turned up in the hospital and had no idea what lead up to her being there. She found out that her husband had been killed and that she had been arrested for doing it. Even after she was told that, she didn’t remember doing that. The audience didn’t know how Miranda got there either. That is explained as the movie progresses. Miranda worked to figure out what happened that night and why she was in the hospital. The mystery part of the movie wasn’t that difficult to figure out. It took Miranda longer to piece things together than it did me. Though perhaps that had something to do with the fact that while she was in the hospital they kept her drugged up on who knows what. That probably muddled her brain a bit. I did think that the movie left a few loose ends. It was made clear that a few things happened, but it wasn’t shown or explained how those things happened. I guess I would have liked just a little more about how things worked out.
I think Gothika is considered a horror movie, but I didn’t think it really was. It wasn’t that scary. There were a few scenes that made people jump, but that was it. There were some suspenseful moments, but I have seen more suspenseful movies. I did think it was entertaining. Some people may think it is too predictable and be bored by it. There wasn’t too much action in the movie, but I didn’t think it was slow. There was enough going on to keep me interested.
There was some violence in Gothika. The violence was just in a few scenes, so it wasn’t packed with it, but those few scenes were a bit graphic and bloody. There were a few disturbing things shown as well. Those things only showed up briefly, but they could be upsetting. I don’t remember there being a lot of swearing in the movie. There was a little bit of nudity in the movie in one scene. The women inmates were in a huge shower room. It was an open room with no privacy and there were a lot of women in there together. They were shown nude from a distance. Halle Berry did go in there to take her shower. She was shown removing her robe and her bare back and shoulders were shown. There were no close ups showing nudity.
The acting in Gothika was good. I thought Halle Berry was very good and believable as Miranda. Her character went though a lot over the course of the movie, and I thought she handled it well. I have liked her in other movies as well. Robert Downey Jr wasn’t in as much of the movie as Halle Berry, but I thought he was also good as Pete. His character was a bit of a mystery at times. Charles S. Dutton only had a few scenes as Douglas. Something about Bernard Hill seemed familiar to me when I saw him in the movie, but I couldn’t figure out why at the time. Then I did some double checking on the cast and discovered that is the man that played King Theoden in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I thought that Penelope Cruz was very good as Chloe. I had only seen her in Vanilla Sky before, and I was less than impressed with her in that movie. She was much better in this movie.
CHARACTERS
Miranda Grey - A psychiatrist that works at a prison mental hospital. She is happily married to another psychiatrist, Douglas. Something happened to her and she ended up in the mental hospital where she worked, accused of murdering her husband. Miranda was determined to figure out what happened.
Douglas Grey - He was the doctor in charge at the hospital where he and Miranda worked. He was also Miranda’s husband.
Pete Graham - Another doctor on staff at the hospital. He seemed to have feelings for Miranda. He became her doctor once she was in the hospital. He didn’t believe her.
Chloe - One of Miranda’s patients. Chloe said that she was raped in her cell at night. No one believed her.
Gothika could have been better, but I did enjoy it. I thought it was entertaining and it kept me interested. Halle Berry fans may also enjoy it. I did like it more than Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
At Woodward Penitentiary for Women, an unexpected and highly disturbed inmate is now held in the psych ward once overseen by criminal psychologist Mir...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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