From Dark Castle Entertainment comes a supernatural horror flick that is stylishly directed and has some alright mood to kick it off only to be hung out to dry by its script.

Halle Berry plays a psychiatrist in a pentientary for mentally unstable women who ends-up on the opposite side of treatment after she almost runs over a distraught girl in a rain storm and is accused of killing her husband. Soon she's suffering from all sorts of ghost visitations while trying to convince people (including former co-worker Robert Downey, Jr.) she's quite sane and didn't murder her hubby.

Gothika is a disappointment. Director Mathieu Kassovitz has a sure hand with the proceedings and Berry is stable in the lead; but the script by Sebastian Gutierrez is quite muddled and doesn't explain a thing for the first hour or so - and when he does try and tie it all together in the final third it comes across as being too rushed (which only causes plot holes galore) and suffers from sloppy logic.

This is a case of a talented director and lead actress being stuck with a movie that would've worked quite fine and showed plenty of promise before the script kicked its ass into "don't bother" territory. (Chris Hartley, 6/23/04)

Directed By: Mathieu Kassovitz.
Written By: Sebastian Gutierrez.

Starring: Halle Berry, Robert Downey, Jr., Charles S. Dutton, John Carroll Lynch.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: A solid transfer with no grain that brings across the films purposely dull look quite well.

Extras: Not a huge amount of extras with a trailer, music video by Limp Bizkit for "Behind Blue Eyes" (originally a Who song, and done better by them) and a so-so commentary that gets dull eventually.