Gothika Year: 2003 Director: Mathieu Kassovitz Written by: Sebastian Gutierrez Threat: Ghost Weapon of Choice: Axe Based upon: none IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
Rish and I had the now rare opportunity to see this one in the theatre together and it may have made all the difference. Rish wasn't going to see it at all because the trailer was so frightening, and frankly, I don't think I would have enjoyed it half as much without someone next to me in a packed theater that I knew was experiencing the movie the same way I was.
A psychiatrist is having an otherwise normal day when on the way home she has a highly unusual experience. Three days later she wakes up incarcerated in the psychiatric prison that she was formerly a doctor for. More weird shit happens and naturally no one believes her now that she's on the other side of the crazy line. Could she be right, though?
I'm not the biggest fan of Halle Berry, in fact most people would consider me to be not a fan at all, but I found it easy to look past my dislike for her. She really fell into the role well. Perhaps too well. The script was fantastic and the execution spot on here. This played out very nicely including a few scares that got everyone in the audience, or at least Rish and me, jumping; yelling, "Damnit!" at the screen, and biting our elbows for a large portion of the movie.
If I have anything to complain about, it is that the plot really isn't watertight. There are a couple holes, and in a disappointing way, it devolves into a mystery toward the end with the horror gradually taking a back seat as the layers of insanity peel back.
I highly recommend this one, especially if you can see it with a participatory audience. Very well done. It brings me hope for the next Dark Castle production.

Rish's Reviews
I told tyranist that I was jealous he got to review this one first, because I was afraid that he'd steal all my ideas. And he did. Perhaps I should just paste his review in here under my name.
Ah well, I'll at least give it a try. Yes, it's true, I saw the trailer for this flick at the beginning of Freddy versus Jason and thought, "That's a movie I probably won't be man enough to go to." It looked really, really disturbing. Plus, they stole the sick backwards walking thing from Ringu (I never heard it referred to as "Ring-goo" before the American version came out, did you?) and that freaks me out even to think about.
But like he said, tyranist took advantage of my Thanksgiving visit and dragged me to the theatre, where I'm sure my girlish shrieks still echo off the walls. And we had a good time. I dug the cast, including Robert Downey Jr. and Bernard Hill (from those pesky Lord of the Rings movies). I, unlike my friend here, like Halle Berry. And call me crazy, but I find her attractive. I thought she was good in this film, and that the film itself was good.
Unfortunately, afterward, we discovered there were about a hundred problems with the plot and were giving each other No Prizes for attempting to explain them. But while I'd normally have a problem with a film this illogical (it certainly hindered my Terminator 3 experience), I had so much fun yelping and biting my arm to keep from screaming (that was MY arm, wasn't it, tyranist?) that it was well worth the price of admission.
The film was a really enjoyable one. It had one of the most frightening ghosts I've ever seen in film (similar in ways to the one in What Lies Beneath, especially bad since one of my true fears has always been seeing a dead woman standing in the middle of the road at night), and a rainbow array of scares involving her. Gothika wasn't as unbearably frightening as I had anticipated, but it certainly did scare the bejeezus out of me. If I were tyranist, with no one to sleep with that night, I probably would've soiled my sheets all the way to the bedsprings.
Oh wait, that wasn't tyranist. It was me.
But I digress. I was impressed by the craft the director showed in misleading us so he could scare us again. I'll be sure to reserve a spot next to Steven Spielberg in hell for him when I get there.
See, because Steven Spielberg scarred me for life with Jaws.
It was a movie.
Best Scare: The part that freaked me out so much from the trailer didn't even bother me all that much in the film. About midway through, there was this one great moment of misdirection and terror that caused me to make the world's oddest sound. The eleven year old girl sitting down the row with her three year old son made fun of us for this.
Note: I asked around, we looked up the word, I even called Auntie Gretchin, but I still have no idea what "gothika" means. Maybe its Swedish for "for the love of god leave your small children at home when you go to horror movies." One can always hope.

Total Skulls: 17

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie		Them!
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?