GOTHIKA

Director: Mathieu Kassovitz & Thom Oliphaunt (Kassovitz is one of France's best young directors - La Haine, more, Oliphaunt has no major film work)
Starring: Halle Barry, Robert Downey Jr., Charles Dutto

Here is some run-of-the-mill psychological thriller fare if ever there was. The plot: Halle Berry is a psychiatrist at a hospital for the criminally insane (gotta love it, right?). Without warning she becomes insane and is admitted to her own hospital. Eventually this leads, via a lot of ghostly encounters, to a deviant sex/murder ring involving a couple of the major characters. Okay, I'm not sure if I want to go into all of the silly plot points, but this said silliness really does add up to a mountain of absurdity. This movie, frankly, wasn't put together very well. There must have been a dozen places where I shook my head at the weird action choices that the characters were making. Despite this I can't claim this was a completely awful picture. I was in fact fooled by a twist or two, and there was some occassional creepy camera work mixed in with the standard thriller shots - some of which I recognized as taken directly from other recent movies (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL for instance). No, this was not a good movie, but it was not quite as awful as the poorly constructed plot seemed to indicate.

Standouts: I can't think of anything.
Blowouts: Let's just say "plot" and leave it at that.

Grade: C