Gothika: * out of ****
Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez. Starring
Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Charles S. Dutton, John Carroll Lynch, Bernard
Hill and Penélope Cruz.
by Andy Keast
This movie is the cinematic equivalent of a party guest switching a ceiling
light on and off, laughing at himself. Leave it to this film to be set almost
entirely in a mental hospital and have absolutely nothing to do with mental
illness, but instead make the psychotic behavior of it's characters the result
of ghosts, hauntings and possession. The visual sensibilities of Mathieu
Kassovitz's "Gothika" are distilled from the most creatively bankrupt efforts
of most music video directors. The screenplay is stuck in the Middle Ages,
obeying the prime directive of all overcooked Hollywood product: be violent and
titillating enough to please adults, and at the same time simple enough for
even the most distracted child to understand. Here the awfulness attains a
kind of brilliance.
Halle Berry is badly miscast as a psychiatrist, perhaps one of the most
embarrassing and unintentionally funny roles since Elisabeth Shue pretended to
be a nuclear physicist in "The Saint." She struggles through lines that must
read like the textbook to an intro to criminology. This, apparently, is what
happens after she wins an Academy Award and her agent encourages her to ask for
22 million on her next picture. She, Penélope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr. move
through a ridiculous "thriller" plot, laced with clues that are placed so
clearly and obviously in plain view, so as not to confuse the most indelibly
stupid audience member. Meaningless set pieces are crafted, where cameras
sweep and dolly like mad without any thought behind the function or purpose of
their respective scenes. To say nothing about the character played by John
Carroll Lynch, whose role somehow manages to be both a plot hole and an
extraneous *deus ex machina.* What is an actor like Bernard Hill doing here?
And that is only the beginning. Matthew Libatique, a gifted cinematographer,
has somehow been whored into setting a new record for Highest Number of
Flickering Lights in a Movie. Everything -*everything*- flickers in this film.
The poster should've come with a warning label for people with epilepsy.
There is that ancient staple of all modern horror films: the flickering
fluorescent lights, which are somehow able to stop flickering and then begin
again on cue. There are several scenes of strobe-effect lightning, accompanied
by prop people dumping god knows how many thousands of gallons of movie rain on
beguiled actors. The flashbacks flicker on and off as well, in (yawn) music
video montages underscored by snyth and digitally-altered screaming. Even
headlights flicker. The movie apparently inhabits the same universe as "The
Matrix" or "Underworld" or the Highlander films: The Land of Perpetual Night,
where there are never any scenes during the daytime and it's always raining
-although you won't see anyone wearing sunglasses indoors (that would've been
enough to throw me over the edge into permanent cerebral damage). I can't
offer any explanation for the recent obsession with whiplash photography and
editing except for an old standard: shorter audience attention spans that have
been enflamed by masturbatory trifles such as video games and MTV, and the
resulting urge to be bulldozed by stimuli. Advice to would-be filmmakers: it's
a movie, not a casino.
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37570 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1271573 X-RT-TitleID: 1127443 X-RT-AuthorID: 9883 X-RT-RatingText: 1/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews