Gothika **½ (2004, Halle Berry, Penélope Cruz, Robert Downey Jr) – Classic Movie Review 2032

Director Mathieu Kassovitz’s moody and interesting 2004 horror movie stars Halle Berry as Dr Miranda Grey, a repressed jail psychiatrist who ends up in one of her own cells after she has stopped her car for a battered naked girl and been engulfed in flames. Waking up as a patient in the asylum where she worked, she has no memory of why she is there or what she might have done. Has she done her hubby (Charles S Dutton) in with an axe?

This intriguingly set up Ring-inspired thriller looks a treat and Berry is a class act, even if she makes an unlikely repressed shrink. But, after a good start, the yarn just gets sillier and sillier and class acts Penélope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr are wasted in unsatisfying and unrewarding support roles. Worse, Bernard Hill seems like a duck out of water as the boss of the jail for the criminally insane.

Cruz plays Berry’s patient Chloe Sava, who was abused by her stepfather and claims she is frequently raped by the devil in her cell. Downey Jr plays Dr Pete Graham, who also works in Berry’s department. John Carroll Lynch also stars as Sheriff Ryan. Dorian Harewood, Bronwen Mantel, Kathleen Mackey, Matthew G Taylor, Michel Perron and Andrea Sheldon also appear.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2032

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