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Gothika (Widescreen Edition)

Gothika (Widescreen Edition)

List Price: $19.96
Your Price: $17.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: MELODRAMATICA
Review: Somewhere in this gloomy picture they're may be a decent women's prison exploitation flick. But as a horror film, the movie seems unable to settle into a niche of the gender before abandoning it and exploring another. At once, film noir, simple detective, horrific, "Gothika" changes hands like a deck of flip cards out of chronological order, finally settling on a bizarre plea of social conscience. Before then the movie is often just flip. When a local newspaper's banner front page headline reads, "Local Girl Commits Suicide", the fine line between black and white isn't grey, but completely colorless.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A CONFUSED MESS THAT'S ALL OVER YET NOWHERE
Review: A seemingly ordinary psychiatrist finds herself locked up in her own mental institution for a murder she can't remember, and with a ghost that won't leave her alone. The background music creeps and skulks and spasms, as the camera undulates, but the content is scattershot and laughably melodramatic. Add to that a doozy screenplay that skips between the natural and supernatural with such wild abandon that you never quite know where you are. If the director had been less interested in getting Berry out of her baggy hospital costumes, perhaps we could have savored a thriller with some coherence.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The worst Movie I have seen all year
Review: This movie sux. It has a very poor plot, it starts out slow, it is predictable, the acting is pure ass, and it definately isn't scary. Halle Berry(2002 Oscar Winner) has just ruined her carrer, and Penelope Cruz can't act at all. This movie is an insult to horror movies, and I know I am 'NOT ALONE' in thinking that. The best part of this movie was the Limp Bizkit song at the end, that is how sad this movie is. Limp Bizkit sux, but Gothika sucks 100 times more.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: reminds me of another movie
Review: Yep this is a bit like Fallen from five years ago. Fallen tried to do something and failed. Gothika tried the same thing and it worked. Halle Barry is the only person possessed throughout the whole movie and it has a psychological effect on her, and, throughout the course of the movie, the viewer is able to see the progression of her as a psychologist moving into the role of a being a mental patient. With Fallen, the possession of the soul moved too quickly and there were too many people that were possessed.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Horrible...
Review: I have seen some pretty horrible movies in my time, but man does Gothika take the cake. It was a pretty big rip off of The Ring in the case of a little girl haunting an adult woman, usually a reporter or a psychiatrist.

Most of the movie was spent displaying boring pan camera angles that eventually almost lull you to sleep, and what is Halle Berry doing in a movie like this? She should be getting frisky with James Bond or trying to seduce Fred Flinstone. Anything is better than seeing her go ballnuts in a second rate crapfest.

I could go on and on, but I'll spare you the gory details and tell you that this movie is just terrible. Skip it on DVD and hope it is on TV if you desperately want to see it.

Oh yeah, and where the hell did they get the name Gothika? There's nothing even closely related to that name in this movie, nor does anything even suggest a reason for the movie to be known by that name. I think I'd name it something more along the lines off 'Crapika'.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Ho hum
Review: It all comes down to one thing. Black men wanting to have sex with white women any way they can. I really liked the special effects in this movie though. The best one was of Robert Downy Jr. driving a car. I mean like c'mon we're supposed to believe the sirector could keep him off cocaine long enough for him to actually get behind the wheel? It was the most effective Blue-screen effect I have ever witnessed.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: GOTCHA! (Kind Of...)
Review: Director Mathieu Kassovitz pours on the atmosphere (literally) in this sci-fi thriller set in a dreadfully gloomy mental institution that needs a serious makeover. It seems to never stop raining or lightning - ever! It's dark and scary and the lights are always on the kaput. Can't someone change those light bulbs! Won't somebody check those darn circuit breakers? Halle Berry acts herself crazy (again, literally), but hey, Halle, lay off that Botox if you want some more facial expressions! Halle sees a beaten woman driving home one (stormy) night and crashes into a tree. She wakes up in the same hospital as a patient and a criminal for killing her husband (her boss). Is she really crazy or is this a plot? Did some coworker inject her with mind-altering drugs? Why is Robert Downing, Jr. playing a smaller role here? Why is he speaking with that weird accent? Did Halle imagine that girl on the road? Oops! - remember "What Lies Beneath? I think it's the same girl! The rest of the film is a run and chase sequence where Halle discovers who is really dead and who should be. There are also some really disgusting revelations as to what happened to some missing people and it's all gleefully recorded on film! Remember the movie, "8MM"? Eeewww! There is somewhat of a happy ending (if only because it finally stops raining!), but then Halle sees another child in a dangerous situation - or is it a ghost? Or, is it Haley Joel Osment? Is she seeing 'dead people' too? Why do their first names sound the same? Is that part of the plot too? Remember "The Sixth Sense"? Remember every other horror movie cliche from the last ten years? What in God's name is happening here???

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Cinematography, trite uncreative dialog
Review: Great Cinematography, trite uncreative dialog......I was not blown away by the ending.....I figured it out.
Very "the Ring"-ish

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This movie is AWESOME
Review: One of the spookiest movies I have seen in a long time, Halle Berry nailed the performance. The whole movie is pretty much shot in the dark which adds to the suspence and sence of supernatural. Would recommend this movie for any scary movie buff.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Sheer Madness
Review: Gothika is a ghost story that, despite its promising start and an effective performance from star Halle Berry, ends up falling apart.

Criminal psychologist Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) awakens to find herself a patient in the very same mental institution in which she works, with no memory of the murder of her husband, Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles S. Dutton) that she's accused of committing. As she tries to regain her memory and convince her coworkers, including Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.), of her innocence, a vengeful spirit uses her as an earthly pawn. When she tells the others, this only serves to further convince them of both her guilt, and her increasingly steady descent into a nightmare of fear and horror.

Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, the film has plenty of atmospheric touches, solid special effects, and as I previously said a good performance from Berry--unfortunately though this time that's not enough. As I have said, over and over again, in order for a thriller to work, it has to have a good story. Everything else should only act to enhance the foundation. Of course, this is true of films in general, but thrillers deserve even more care, unless you are going for a B-grade style in the first place. Gothika starts off quite strong and then about midway through becomes sadly predictable and mundane. For me, the only reason I stayed with it until the end is Berry. She proves once again, that she has both beauty and brains, to pull off any role she wants. The twists, turns, jolts, and surprises were too easy to spot. Thereby ruining, what could have been, an otherwise errie film. Really a shame.

The DVD has an audio commentary featuring Kassovitz and the film's director of photography Matthew Libatique. The track is worth a listen, only if you are so frustrated after the film ends, that you care to find out what may have gone wrong. The only other extra on the disc is the music video for the song "Behind Blue Eyes", performed Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, and featured on the film's soundtrack.

What a letdown. Rent Gothika only to see Berry--don't expect much else except wasted potential...


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