Gothika (DVD)

...The most horrifying thing about Gothika is that the storyline made it past the planning stages. This is the scriptwriter, Sebastian Gutierrez, first real Hollywood movie and it really does show. The dialogue is more wooden than Pinocchio. The line “I don’t believe in ghosts but THEY believe in me” sums this film up so perfectly. Gutierrez may have well have just written a map to show me where the story was going, as it was so transparent. The twists ...
...well! Part of the reason Gothika seemed so flat and one dimensional was due to this movie school style direction. Having said this though, I did like the special effects and make up. They certainly gave this rather lacklustre film some much needed polish. Although the make up effects used do give the film some much needed chills, it is so reminiscent of Samara from Hollywood version of The Ring that again I cry out about the total lack of imagination ...

demonicsmurfette 28.05.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

...of what has happened. Gothika starts off well. The dark, brooding mental asylum, with its imposing grey architecture, raging thunderstorms and frequent power cuts and flickering, buzzing electric lights is the ideal backdrop for a chilling, suspenseful movie. There is always something chilling about these kinds of places anyway, and it is used to full effect with it being clear from the outset that something sinister is going to happen. Unfortunately, ...
...is absolutely nothing new as the director forsakes the opportunities to build the suspense through visual effects in the asylum and resorts instead to the now over-used formula of making the audience jump through ghostly images appearing where we (supposedly) least expect it. The problem is that this formula has been done to death since films such as “The Sixth Sense” and “What Lies Beneath” and anyone who is used to watching these kinds of films ...

Pumpkin 13.04.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

...she is NOT ALONE…. Gothika is a mediocre film crying out to be a good one. There are lots of good ideas and some nice creepy touches that will certainly entertain and startle in equal doses. But when the final act is played, you are left with the overwhelming feeling that you’ve seen it all before. Gothika is a ghost story and ghost stories will go one of two ways. In films, ghosts are either malevolent, mischievous spectres who do ...
...That would be telling… Gothika suffers terribly from clichés. They are everywhere. Throughout the film, it seems to be a dark and stormy night. The loony bin is a huge sprawling building standing in the middle of nowhere like a huge tombstone rising out of the trees. Former friends and employees suddenly seem intent in believing the worst and despite having worked with her for years, they seem quite content to believe that Miranda Grey has ...

LostWitness 29.12.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

...instead of the doctor? Gothika does contain the occasional surprise but it is hardly a scare-a-minute movie. To be honest I would say it is more of a psychological drama than a horror. The story does follow the usual horror road and rarely strays from the well beaten track made by other unimaginative directors. The atmosphere and suspense is at best mediocre and the story itself is little more than average. A seasoned film watcher will be able to ...
...The dull personalities of the characters were down to the writing rather than the actual acting of the roles. If you're looking for a proper scare-fest I wouldn't get this film but, as hard as it may sound, if you have time to kill you could find worse than Gothika ...

jimothyjim00 12.10.2005 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

I seem to be going through one of those phases where if a DVD is given to me I feel the urge to watch it. It doesn’t matter what the film is or whether I’ve heard people say its good or bad before. I just seem to be in a frame of mind where I will pretty much watch anything. Or at least that’s the only reason I can think of as to why I sat down and withstood the torture that is Gothika. I will admit now I had been warned it was ...
...The plot is fairly standard; Dr Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a psychiatrist at a mental institution for criminally insane women. She works with her husband Dr Douglas Grey (Charles Dutton) who is the senior psychologist at the hospital. Having finished a gruelling day at work Miranda is heading home to be with her husband. The main road is closed and she’s diverted a different way. After crossing the bridge a girl seems to be standing in the ...

Andy.mack 11.05.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

...corny and cheesy Style: Gothika is a very stylish movie. Supremely stylish actually, is very easy on the eye. I like the slick production design, the atmosphere, and the interesting symbolism, with keeping continuous themes, throughout the whole film. Overall: A chilling, stylish and powerfully acted romp, with all the shock factor and added cheesiness needed! ...

Josh-Applegate91 24.11.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

...girlie scardy cat anyway, watching Gothika had terrified me and I had to grab onto something! The Cast Dr. Miranda Grey - Halle Berry Chloe - Penelope Cruz Dr. Pete Graham - Robert Downey Jnr. Dr. Douglas Grey - Charles Dutton Sheriff Bob Ryan - John Carroll Lynch Rachel Parsons - Kathleen Mackey Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz (Crimson Rivers) and written by Sebastian Gutierrez. The plot Based in an American state Penitentiary for mentally ...
...respected and beautiful Dr, who is married to her boss and colleague, Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles Dutton), Chloe (Cruz) is a disturbed and mentally tortured in mate, who believes that the devil visits her in her cell at night and rapes her. The film begins with Dr. Miranda Grey counselling Chloe, trying to work out what has happened in her life that has caused her to have delusions such as these. Frustrated and angered that Dr. Grey won't listen to ...

Christina666 05.04.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

...About Gothika **story** Gothika has been on general release in the UK since April 2nd 2004. The basic plot centers around a criminal psychologist (irritatingly referred to at points in the film as a psychiatrist) - Dr Miranda Grey. Miranda is played by the Oscar wining actress Halle Berry. Miranda treats seriously disturbed women on the psychiatric ward of a female jail in America - the fictitious Woodward Penitentiary for Women. Miranda's husband, ...
...**The Cast** Gothika has an impressive cast which may lead you to watch the film. Here's the line up: Halle Berry - (die another day, swordfish, monsters ball, X-men) Robert Downey Jr - (Richard III, natural born killers, Weird science) Penelope Cruz - (blow, vanilla sky) Charles S Dutton - (Mimic, a time to kill, crocodile Dundee 2) John Carroll Lynch - (the good girl, Fargo) Bernard Hill - (the lord of the rings, titanic) **Crew** Director: ...

littlem 09.04.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

Saw this last night ...and erm, I wasn't really that impressed! I meant to go to the flicks for weeks, but ended up seeing it on DVD instead, so maybe the better effects were slightly muted.... Anyways, story goes like this: Halle Berry plays Psychiatrist Miranda Grey at an Institute for the Criminally Insane. Great start, has all the ingredients to be a good film. Penelope Cruz had a smaller part as one of Grey's patients, slight nutter with ...
...sorry) Robert Downey Jnr is a colleague at the institute. There are a few other recognisable faces, but those are the bigger names. Cruz pops up several times through the film, as does Downey Jnr. But the main spotlight is on Berry. The film is set almost exclusively in a dark, dismal, run-down, grey, gloomy, spooky Penitentiary. Why did the isolation area have cracked walls and missing plaster, with 4' wide cells, and the main observation area ...

Bronze224 22.05.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

From the get go, I have to admit two guilty pleasures. I love creepy thrillers, especially of the horror variety. The cheesier the better as far as I'm concerned (see any Hammer House of Horror picture). My second thing is Halle Berry. I loved her in Monsters Ball for which she really deserved the Oscar and I love anybody that plays a Bond girl. So, I rented Gothika. I'd heard all the negative reviews but I wanted to judge for myself. So here's my ...
...psycharatrist working in a woman's asylum for the criminally insane. She works alongside Peter Graham (Robert Downey Jr), a fellow doctor with a serious crush on her despite the fact that her husband, Dr Doug Richardson (Charles Dutton), is the boss of the institute. Miranda is dealing mainly with a woman called Chloe (played by an incredibly annoying Penople Cruz) who claims that Satan rapes her at night in her cell. Obviously, no one believes her ...

lush_lozenge 11.08.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

This is not a bad film, but it is not great either. The film is about Miranda Gray a psychologist who works with inmates at a psychiatric prison. She is married to her boss. One stormy night(cliché!) as she drives home she almost crashes into a young girl standing in the middle of the road. She stops the car, gets out and looks into her eyes…. When she wakes up she is now inside a prison cell. She cannot remember how she got there. However ...
...was brutally butchered by an axe. She was found at the scene with an axe in hand. She and the audience realise that she has now become a prisoner in her own prison. The film does portray the horror of Miranda’s position quite well I feel. Haille Berry is very believable in the role. It reminds me a little bit of something Edgar Allen Poe would have done. The idea of being imprisoned for something a person cannot remember doing is quite a chilling ...

Fantasyman 08.04.2005 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

This is a film you will only ever want to see once. I had the misfortune to watch this films three times ... twice on a plane from Boston and then again when my friends dragged me to the cinema. Each time the movie got more boring and the flaws of the film more obvious, because the so-called shocks and twists neither shocked nor twisted. In fact, many of the twists had been extremely obvious to any intelligent viewer, and so had never really twisted ...
...only thing to make me jump was the barn owl flying past Halle Berry in the basement (nearing the end of the film), simply because I had forgotten it. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a criminal psychologist, working in a high-security facility for the criminally insane (for want of a better description). Her husband Doug (Charles Dutton) is also her boss, and in my opinion was mis-cast! There was no chemistry between the two and when I thought about ...

xxxxdomixxxx 12.05.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

Well, I went to the cinema to watch this the first time I saw it. It would have been a lot better if there we're not two silly girls screaming at the screen during the film! I thought the story was set out quite well. Halle Berry plays Miranda Grey, a phyciatrist, who is the doctor to Penelope Cruz the victim of an abusive step father. The story follows Miranda Grey's shift end and journey home, where she has a car accident at a bridge on a stormy ...
...then bursts into flames. Then Miranda wakes up three day's later as a patient in the hospital that she works in with her former collegue (Robert Downey Jr) treating her. Her husband (the Hospital Director played by Charles Dutton, also in Alien 3) is dead and she has no recolection of comitting the crime. She is possesed by the young girl and together they solve a crime with a great twist. The film has lots of jumpy bits and lots of suspense. I was ...

t_winkle23 14.09.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

So far I have seen this twice and am about to embark on my third sitting, to keep my sci-fi horror mad daughter of eleven, who knows no fear, company. Should have watched it with her first, then I could have hid behind her at the jumpy bits. Actually I watched this first with my husband, then with my best friend (who thinks I wimp out at anything scary, only to proclaim this is the scariest film she has ever seen and will not watch it again). It ...
...Patronising and placifying the patient Chloe (penelope cruz), Doctor Miranda Gray (halle berry) is at a loss on how to treat her patients claims of brutal rape by the Devil himself, inside her locked "observation rooms". Within a short time into the film Ms Berry finds her self well and truly on the other side of the glass. Having stopped to help a victim of attack on her way home she wakes to find herself in the observation room of the very hospital ...

supersue123 27.04.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)

\Story\ Miranda Grey is a happyily married psychiatrist in a dark and dingy Psychiatrict hospital, she goes to work comes home and lives a preety ordinary life, until one dark and stormy night when she encounters a girl who appears to be dieing, suddenly the whole world blanks out and Miranda wakes up in her own cell, accused of murdering her husband. Nobody believes that she is innocent and even her best friend played by Robert Downey Jnr doubts ...
...mixing up trouble, as she tries to escape her cell, she finds out a grissly secret that shatters her whole exictents. \Performances/ This has been said before and will be said again Halle Berry is a excellent actress, she injects life into her charecter, as well as crying, fighting, giving up and using her incredible strngh throught the film, she portrays Miranda with vulnerabilty and complete strengh, almost oscar worthy. Robert Downey Jnr is ...

JayHall1991 21.09.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Gothika (DVD)