Intermission: Despite cast, story 'Gothika' fails miserably

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

There are certain movies which should be required viewing for students in film school or just students of film in general. "Citizen Kane" is one. The first two "Godfather" films are classics. Todd Hayne's masterpiece "Far From Heaven" should be included as well, and Clint Eastwood's latest, "Mystic River," is a must.

The new psychodrama/horror film "Gothika" should be included, too. It's a textbook example of how to take an engaging story, a decent team of actors and a huge budget and screw things up beyond any means of repair. The most ludicrous thing I've witnessed lately is the NBC soap opera "Passions." It's on at the YMCA when I go so I have to watch it. That show actually has a monkey dressed in a nurse's uniform, and sometimes people burst into flames. "Gothika" has pretty much the same aesthetic values.

Dialogue beyond belief, narrative so muddled the filmmakers resort to having characters explain to each other what the heck is going on, and a hyperactive Halle Berry combine for a knockout punch of laughably bad movie making.

The story is actually a good one, but director Mathieu Kassovitz makes so many bad choices and takes so many wrong turns I was reduced to taking on the attitude of Ignatius Reilly in "A Confederacy of Dunces." Reilly had the habit of standing up during particularly bad films and shouting, "Won't someone with an ounce of decency find the fuse box and put an end to this abomination!"

Thankfully my wife was there to keep me in check, but we still had many laughs at this bottom-feeding piece of schlock.

Kassovitch, a French director, has made three brilliant films in the past 10 years with "Caf au Lait," "Hate," and "Crimson Rivers." He's apparently gone overboard trying to make his mark in the Hollywood establishment. Ed Wood (who directed "Plan 9 From Outer Space") stands a better chance of achieving this goal, and he's been dead since 1978.

Berry plays Dr. Miranda Grey, a prison psychiatrist who has recently married her boss, Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles S. Dutton). One dark and stormy night could it be any other way in a film like this? Miranda encounters the ghost of a young girl standing on a bridge. The apparition bursts into flames. That's the last thing Miranda remembers.

When Miranda wakes up, she's in a psychiatric ward, accused of the brutal murder of her husband. This is not just any psych ward, mind you, but the very one in which she worked.

She's being treated by a colleague (Robert Downey Jr. in an entirely superfluous role) who may or may not be her lover.

"Did we have an affair?," asks Miranda. "Did you want to?" is his reply. "Does anyone have an airsickness bag?" was my response.

One of Miranda's former patients, Chloe, has told the doctor she is being sexually abused by someone who works at the hospital. The ever understanding Miranda has put this off as the rantings of a madwoman. But once locked up herself, Miranda starts to believe there may be something more to the tale.

She also knows the strange girl on the bridge has something to do with all of this. Scars on Miranda's arm, blood on the walls, even steam on the mirror keep spelling out the phrase "Not alone." Not that we have any idea whatsoever what that might imply.

In an attempt to re-create the same sort of feeling Alfred Hitchcock often evoked with his "falsely accused person in the wrong place at the wrong time" characters, Kassovitz and writer Sebastian Gutierrez try to make us sympathize with Miranda. Even the fact that she looks like Halle Berry isn't enough to make the viewer take her side. My feeling was she should have hacked her husband and everyone else in the movie to death and then turned the ax on herself. Twenty minutes, tops. Whack! And we're outta there.

But no such luck.

In the course of her "treatment," bad things keep coming to the surface. We're introduced to Sheriff Ryan, who was Miranda's husband's best friend. We know this because when he's brought onscreen, the person accompanying him says, "Miranda, this is Sheriff Ryan, Doug's best friend."

In a rare moment of pleasure in "Gothika" I realized Sheriff Ryan was John Carroll Lynch, who played Marv "Son of a" Gunderson in "Fargo." I was searching for anything positive I could muster by this time, and "Fargo" is one of the best films ever made.

After an entirely implausible escape scene one of the cops sees Miranda under his desk and tosses her his car keys the doctor is off to some farmhouse that has no relation to anything we've yet seen in the film.

Here she discovers a bondage room equipped with instruments of torture and, of course, a digital handi-cam. After viewing the tape that was conveniently left in the camera, things make a lot more sense to Miranda. But not to the audience.

The final act of "Gothika" concerns Miranda trying to vindicate herself and expose the horrors that have been taking place.

One thing that makes this film so inane and unenjoyable concerns the murder of Dr. Douglas Grey. Did the ghost do it? Did Miranda do it? No matter who did it, there are no ramifications. No one is punished, and no redemption is offered. There's not even any rationalizing about it. Really, even the worst of films can always resort to rationalizations. And this is the worst of films.

"Gothika" was almost a welcome release, though. There have been so many great movies debuting in the past few months that a stinker like this is needed to cleanse the palate. Truth be told, I may watch it again when it comes out on DVD. I've seen "Plan 9" more times than I can count and "Gothika" can proudly take its place in the "Worst Films of All Time" Hall of Shame.