After a string of star-studded, ghost-related romps, it seemed that the minds behind Dark Castle films fancied trying something far more subtle than the rambunctious likes of The House On Haunted Hill, Thirteen Ghosts and Ghost Ship. To be fair, considering that all three of those films featured characters aimlessly wandering around various, haunted structures while waiting to be attacked by some violent apparition in an explosion of flashy 90s/00s editing, a change was probably something of a wise move.
The result ended up being Gothika, which saw a rather meaty gathering of thespians try to pick through a supernatural murder mystery within the confines of a penitentiary, while being directed by the man who gave us La Haine. Surely we were in for some sort of gooseflesh raising treat as Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Penelope Cruz and Charles S. Dutton united to take Dark Castle’s curious obsession with ghosts to brand new heights. However, the result ended up being somehow the dumbest film the production house had managed to deliver so far – yep, somehow even dumber than Ghost Ship.
Dr. Miranda Grey is a psychiatrist working at the Woodward Penitentiary in rural Connecticut, who has a healthy marriage with her husband Douglas and a good working relationship with her colleague, Dr. Pete Graham. However, while she works to aid the various disturbed women under her care – such as the volatile Chloe – Miranda is about to discover what it feels like to be the other side of of the bars after a freak accident flips her life upside-down. When she plants her car into a ditch after trying to avoid a wounded, screaming woman in the middle of the road, she awakes to find herself an inmate of her own ward after spending an alarming amount of time in a catatonic state.
Graham informs her of the grim news that apparently saw her go home that night and chop her husband up into pieces with an axe. Stunned that she has no memory of slaughtering her own spouse, Meredith struggles to convince her former colleagues of her own sanity, but this task is made exponentially more difficult by the fact that the screaming girl she witnessed earlier, is actually a ghost who keeps violently attacking her at the drop of a hat. But after numerous assaults and having the cryptic words “not alone” carved into her forearm, Meredith realises that she somehow needs to solve this conundrum herself if she’s ever going to have a chance of freedom.
But how to you clear your name if you’re locked in the psych-ward of a female penitentiary? And what do you do when the facts point to you chopping up your beau under the thrall of possession? There’s a conspiracy at work here, and the only one who can solve it is a woman that everyone thinks is violently crackers.
There’s certainly an intriguing story at the core of Gothika that contains more then a couple of genuinely unsettling scenarios. The dilemma of trying to prove your sanity when everyone has already decided that you’re crazy is always fertile, anxiety-inducing, land to play in, and when you add the further aspects of a murder that needs to be solved and a marauding ghost that needs to be appeased, the film should have been a home run. While I’ve found the more energetic, campy violence of Dark Castle’s previous films fun in a disposable, goofy, spook-house kind of way, it truly seemed that director Mathieu Kassovitz was going to deliver something far meatier dramatically speaking. However, Gothika turned out to be just as campy and vapid as those other movies, but then also had the added issue of being rather slow too, as it attempted to try and take its story somewhat seriously.
The problem is, the film is far too silly to treat with a straight face and as a result, we’re stuck with a very flimsy plot that even the likes of a eye-bulging Halle Berry and a terminally smug Robert Downey Jr. fail to elevate. For a start, rather that treating its supernatural element with a sense of maturity, the film batters you with flashy edits and loud, sudden shocks to try and ensure that you’re REALLY SCARED!!! However, this leads the movie to repeatedly shoot itself in its own ghost-foot as you try and work out why this ghost who wants justice, repeatedly beats the shit and brutalises the only person who is actually helping her. Halle Berry has a quiet moment to put the pieces together? BANG! Ghost kicks her ass. Berry’s is trying to hide from guards while escaping? BOOM! Ghost kicks her ass. You soon find yourself wondering if this dead girl actually wants any help in the first place and it’s tough to have any empathy, even if she did have to suffer a terrible end.
From here, Kassovitz keeps things stylish with gliding cinematography and impossible camera work much in the same way that Robert Zemeckis (a producer here) did on What Lies Beneath; but despite going overboard on the blue filters, it’s tough to spot any of the same filmmaker who gave us the iconic “C’est à moi que tu parles?” scene from La Haine. Similarly, the actors all deliver passable performances, with Berry spending most of the time trying to make her eyes go as wide as they can possibly go. Downey Jr. is literally on best behavior as he was in his wilderness years at the time (although the fact that he accidently broke Berry’s arm for real was tempered by the fact he met his future wife during the production), and Penelope Cruz overacts wildly from underneath a set of bangs so severe, that it might have been the moment that created the jokey link between that particular haircut and perceived mental instability (apologies if bangs are your thing – I’m sure they look great on you).
All in all, the main issue with Dark Castle attempting to change up its tone is that it strips out any sense of malevolent fun while failing to actually be scary, intelligent or even exciting. In fact, the more straight Gothika plays itself, the dumber it becomes and even a last act, hard-right turn into psycho killer, whodunit territory is telegraphed so much, the most shocking thing about it is that the film actually seems to think it’s a surprise.
Worse yet, we’re left to mull over the end credits with only Limp Bizkit’s cover of “Behind Blue Eyes” to console us – but even that is a small mercy when you remember that the music video had Fred Durst make out with Halle Berry only for us to find out that the front man actually directed the thing. Anyway… I digress.
While strong on style, Gothika unfortunately trades it in at the expense of smarts and genuine scares to deliver a film that – much like it’s unhelpful ghost – insists on planting itself right in the middle of the road. Simply put, when compared to similar “boo-dunnits” such as The Sixth Sense and Stir Of Echoes, there’s not a lot of substance to its non-corporeal form.
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