There are generally three categories a horror movie can fall into: good, bad or so bad it’s good. “The Sixth Sense” was good, combining suspense with a surprising twist at the end. “Evil Dead” is so bad it’s good, with its over-the-top special effects and a ridiculous plot.
Unfortunately, “Gothika,” the Halle Berry-fronted thriller released nationwide last Friday, slips into the “bad” category. The plot has lots of holes but remains generally predictable; incomprehensible editing creates musical crescendos that lead nowhere; and far too many cheesy lines are thrown in for good measure.
Let’s begin with the plot. As the film opens, a psychiatrist (Berry, “Monster’s Ball”) is trying in vain to treat an institutionalized patient (Penelope Cruz, “Vanilla Sky”) who claims the devil enters her at night and burns her. Obviously frustrated with her inability to treat the patient, Berry talks to her husband, works in her office for a while, takes a swim and drives home.
On the way home, she’s forced to take a detour across a bridge. Just as she crosses the bridge, Berry sees a girl standing in the middle of the road. She swerves off the road and goes back to help the girl, who bursts into flames. Then the screen goes black.
In the next scene, Berry wakes up in the very institution she worked in and finds out that she is accused of brutally murdering her husband, an act she doesn’t remember committing. The last thing she remembers is the girl on the bridge.
As the movies progresses, Berry tries to put together the pieces of her husband’s murder, in the process discovering a nasty secret and dealing with a ghost who tries, violently and repeatedly, to make Berry understand the murder. By the end, Berry solves the mystery, which also involves the patient she tried to treat at the beginning of the movie, and goes back to leading a somewhat normal life.
While this plot leaves much room for elaboration and twists, neither is employed to a great degree. In fact, it’s almost painfully straightforward, as all the pieces of the mystery fall into place in order. There’s only one really confusing aspect of the plot: The phrase “not alone” appears throughout the film, smeared in blood at Berry’s husband’s murder scene, drawn in a ghostly fog on Berry’s cell window and later carved into her arm.
One of the greatest errors in “Gothika” is its soundtrack. The music itself works well, but due to a confusing editing job, the audience is left with suspenseful music that doesn’t go anywhere.
At one point, Berry is walking down an old flight of stairs into a hidden room in a barn. The tension builds as the music grows louder and faster. When it reaches its loudest point, the audience members are on the edge of their seats, waiting for something to jump into the scene.
However, nothing happens. At the screening I attended, the audience actually burst into laughter at this point.
One thing “Gothika” does deserve credit for is its use of surprise tactics. There are lots of ghosts appearing out of nowhere, people jumping into the scene from around a corner, and one particularly memorable scene in which a ghost is shown teetering into a room. The spirit is shot using a combination of stop motion and slow motion, an effect that makes it especially creepy.
Unfortunately, these surprises only function to frighten the audience while the moments are actually occurring and the film doesn’t follow through enough with larger-scale scare tactics to make the movie a fright fest overall.
“Gothika” will probably keep audiences interested through its entire two hours, but don’t expect to have any trouble falling asleep after seeing it. You might scream at a few points, but in general the movie doesn’t get the job done.
Grade: C
