Dark, Demented, and Cliche
You're about to enter a lonely old barn out in the middle of nowhere, and this barn could be filled with murderers, ghosts and other demonic beings. The barn has a a huge door, so pulling it open all the way would allow the sun to brighten the entire. Wouldn't you pull it open all the way so you could see inside, rather than walk around in pitch black darkness? Well, if you're in a horror movie, then you'll only be able to open it about two inches. Their are cliches running rampant, and scenes forced into the movie to give it a scarier feel. Gothika is only the latest example of how stagnant the horror genre has become. The genre needs a swift kick right in the ass because things aren't getting much better.
Mr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a psychiatrist at an Asylum for criminally insane woman. She seemingly has a good life, but all that goes horribly wrong on a stereotypical rainy night when she encounters a child standing in the middle of the road. After watching the child burst into flames right in front of her, she blacks out, and wakes up as a patient in the same prison she was a doctor in. She is told by her former co-worker Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr) that she killed her husband. Miranda must weave her way through ghost stories and her own psyche to understand what has happened.
The whole setup of the plot is ridiculous. Why would Miranda be held in the same prison she worked in? The movie tells us that she is being transferred, but that doesn't matter. To further confuse the viewer, there's really nothing vitally important about the prison, she could have been at any other prison with different characters, and the story would have turned out the exact same way. One scene has a group of inmates showering together in typical prison fashion. While I can't claim to have ever been to an insane asylum, I really don't think that the patients would shower together. I mean, they're INSANE. The movie just points out why things can't really be like this.
There were just two many cliches for me to enjoy this movie. This is a sad thing, because the performances are very good, and the atmosphere is phenomenal. I'm tired of people tripping and falling because it's a horror movie, I'm tired of people doing things that would make a normal person piss their pants and run for home, and I'm tired of watching the same story with different characters. So, a dead girl wants revenge so she haunts people. Never seen that before. Oh wait, yes I have, about a thousand times. The last movie was The Ring, which at least didn't have a feel good ending. Everything about Gothika just screams cliche. At the end of the movie, you'll probably be confused, but you also won't care. This movie is a perfect example of what is wrong with horror movies today.