I just finished watching the movie �Gothika.� It is a another movie done by Dark Castle productions. I do not know when this production movie came around, but I really like it. The first movie I noticed that was produced by this company was �House on Haunted Hill,� a very scary movie, and a great movie too, I really enjoyed that one. The only other movie I know made possible by this production company is �Thir13en Ghosts,� but I did not enjoy that one as much.
The movie �Gothika� started out with Penelope Cruz. She is �crazy.� Or so everybody thinks so. The opening of the movie has movie credits, so that takes some movie time before actually getting to the little talk our star, Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz have. Penelope Cruz is in the mental hospital. For some reason, mental hospitals are pretty darn scary, aren�t they? I mean, there are all of these creepy people around them. Unfortunately there were no scares from any of the extras in the movie.
Oh, by the way, if you have any interest in seeing �Gothika,� which I�m not going to suggest to you anyway, please discontinue your reading.
Halle Berry listens to Penelope with a very careless look on her face. Penelope goes on telling a really random story about how she is being raped every night by�the devil himself. She sees fire around him or something, I wasn�t really paying attention in the beginning. It was later, when I found out that she was being raped. Personally, I hate rape, I hate rape stories, and the thought of doing that to somebody is sick. But Penelope was being raped, she said. The weird part is, she is in the hospital and nobody sees anybody go in there. So there�s a ghost.
Halle goes to talk to her boss, who we find out is her husband by an inappropriate kiss in his office that lasts until Robert Downey Jr. comes in through the door with a knock. This guy is really cool, I like his character, but I dislike how his character changes throughout the movie. Halle�s husband leaves for the night and that leaves Robert and Halle alone. After taking 55 laps in the pool in the hospital, she heads home.
There is a detour. Because of rain. The picture of the mental hospital being soaked by rain is really creepy. Loud sounds of thunder really got me into a horror-ific mood.
So down the wet wet road, Halle goes, and then crosses a creepy bridge, when all of a sudden she sees a naked girl in the road and without hitting her, she drives right past her and into a ditch. When Halle recovers, seconds later, she goes over to see this girl, in the dark. When Halle notices a few cuts on her, she only sees even more cuts�all over her body. �I�ll help you, I�m a doctor,� Halle says, and then the girl, who is about 16 or 17 grabs Halle�s face and the movie goes black.
This idea, seeing the girl by the road has actually been thought before. Somebody sees a girl by the road and then goes back, but a I have thought of a twist in this little scene that I will never tell, only telling you that I have one will have to satisfy you, haha. But this idea originally was first heard to my ears by Vicky. She told me how scary it would be if that happened, and I told her we should make a movie about it. Correct, Vicklo?
Halle wakes up to learn that she has been in her own hospital for three days. She learns this from Robert Downey Jr. He tells her that and then asks her to explain the last thing she remembers. She explains a little more of the story that night, leaving out the part about the girl. She goes home to see her husband smoking a cigar. That�s all she tells him. THEN she goes on about seeing the girl.
Robert Downey Jr. tells her about her husband. �Doug is dead. You killed him.� Halle, of course, freaks out, cries, and gets drugs injected by the nurses.
Now, remember, when Penelope, the pathetic story teller from the beginning told Halle her turmoil with the devil, Halle didn�t think twice about it and thought she was crazy. This time, Robert Downey has no choice but to think she is crazy. He leaves her in her cell. The next scene is Halle walking with a way-too-nice nurse to the shower room. We see dozens of women showering, but this is nothing if you want to see some hardcore nudity, trust me. The camera angles are well thought out and well done.
I actually think that this movie was directed very well.
Halle starts seeing the 17 year old girl in the shower and then this girl starts hitting her, cutting Halle with her nails. Halle�s arm is stitched before we see the cuts, so I knew that we would be seeing it later. Halle starts remembering the night she needed to remember with the girl, and her husband. She sees blood, lots of blood. I thought this scene was pretty good. Again, really well directed. Screams scare us, I jumped for the first �vision.� �Jumped,� meaning I got frightened, scared.
Halle talks with the space around her, meaning nobody is around her. She tells this person to open her cell door. After a quiet pause, a loud buzz opens the electronic glass door keeping Halle in her cell. She walks all the way down to Penelope�s cell. When she gets close enough, I jumped again because Penelope was shoved up against the door. She was being raped, right in front of Halle. Then this large painting is shown to Halle, and I found out later that it was a tattoo, it was some man�s back. Or so she thought it was.
Robert Downey told Halle that Penelope did that to herself in her cell, like a prison cell.
Then a cop came in to talk to Halle. He asked her what she did when she first got there and then got frustrated and asked her why she killed her husband. She said she could not answer, and the policeman started yelling at her. Halle looked at her arm, which was bandaged because of all the cuts she had�it started bleeding. She took off the bandage and the cuts made words: NOT ALONE.
These words actually meant a lot�a lot of different things. So many things that some turned out to be meaningless and there are so many meanings that I will not bother listing them.
Halle is frightened another night by the girl, who comes in her cell and beats her. The guards save her. This was after Penelope told Halle at their recess, �You�re next.� They were talking about Penelope�s rape.
Halle gets out of her cell somehow and runs out through the hospital, seeing the girl a couple times. Halle hides in the pool, holding her breath. When the cops are gone, since they were looking in the pool area, the 17 year old appears in front of Halle, and screams, underwater. This part probably would scare anybody.
Halle steals a guard, who gives her his keys for no reason, to his car. So she drives out to her house to see the murder scene. She watches herself kill her husband. Then, somehow she is looking through old pictures and gets an idea that she needs to go out to a house with a barn. In the barn there is a creepy trap door and she opens it, to see a black hole. Like in all horror movies, she goes down. Music played a loud part in this scene, which quiets down when she gets in the hole.
In this hole, she turns on a bright light, which showed us a scene of what looked like a scene out of �The General�s Daughter.� There was a bed, with chains on it, and a video camera. She watches a part of the tape in the video camera�to see her husband kissing a 17 year old girl who is chained to the bed. This didn�t bother me only because it was only kissing. The 17 year old girl was not the same one as the one Halle had been seeing, I found out when this girl grabs Halle. This girl had been locked down in the cellar for weeks.
So Halle�s own husband is the badguy. Some how or another, Halle figures that there is another badguy��NOT ALONE.�
She tells this to the cop, who yelled at her before. He asks for an explanation about why a person would do that. She talks about how his father must have left, and the man would have become obsessed with women, and probably even sexually attracted to his own mother, and maybe �got off� by torturing animals. She said that off the top of her head.
�Hmm,� the cop thinks, �That sounds accurate, although I don�t think I ever �got off� by torturing my animals!�
He pounces on her, she rips off his shirt to reveal the tattoos of the girl in flames.
They chase through the hospital without anybody hearing. The cop starts firing his gun and hits a fire extinguisher. The next scene is one of those really quiet �I�m comin for ya,� scenes where the badguy is the one who is looking for Halle. Then HE starts seeing the 17 year old girl.
He follows her and then fires a shot gun at her, which goes through the girl, who is a ghost, and hits the computer behind her. This starts a fire, which grows because of the fire extinguisher that was spraying gas out. The man burns as if he was in hell, and Halle shoots him to kill. That was a cool death, although it wasn�t really good looking in the special effects department.
Somehow or another, Halle got out of the hospital, even though she really did kill her husband, and now killed the cop. Somehow, the cops believed her. For some reason, the 17 year old girl was scaring her and me through the whole movie. This movie was made just for the scares, but kept you interested until the ending. I liked the horror, I was actually scared a couple times. But if I were to ever watch it again, I would not be scared.
SONG OF THE DAY: �Behind Blue Eyes,� by The Who, remade by Limp Bizkit for �Gothika.�
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
An' no one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies
[Chorus:]
But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelin's
Like I do
And I blame you
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain an' woe
Can show through
[Chorus: Repeat]
(Discover)
(L-I-M-P...
Say it...
Discover...)[x4]
No one knows what it's like
To be mistreated
To be defeated
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows how to say
That they're sorry
An' don't worry
I'm not telling lies
[Chorus: Repeat]
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
In the close
All the gray
I�ll stay if you
Go away
Concrete
Tall as the sky
Movement passin� me by
And you blush
What a rush
A reminisce
Cold crush
Next door
Ear to the wall
All the tension
Wait for the call
I wish I wish
I wish it was all that easy[x2]
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