You gotta ask yourself why actresses of the caliber of Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz would sign on to make a horror film with the production company that made Ghost Ship and Thir13en Ghosts?  Probably for the paycheck involved. For whatever reason they, along with Robert Downey Jr. star, in Gothika an eerie, atmospheric film that nearly works but is hampered by a weak script and some stupid plot developments.  The Blu-ray disc looks and sounds very good though, making this a film that's worth watching.

Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a psychologist at a mental hospital for the criminally insane.  She deals with violent crazy people on a daily basis, such as Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz) who brutally murdered her stepfather and claims that the Devil comes into her cell and has sex with her regularly.  Miranda's married to the head of her department, Douglas (Charles S. Dutton) and works with Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.).

One night on her way home from work, Miranda has to take a detour and crosses an old bridge.  Standing in the middle is a young woman, wet, cut up, and dressed in her night gown.  Crashing her car to avoid the lady, Miranda approaches the woman who reaches up and touches her face.

The next thing she knows, Miranda is waking up in one of the cell at the hospital where she works.  Days have passed, most of which Miranda has spent unconscious.  She doesn't remember anything after driving off the road, but Peter informs her that she murdered her husband with an axe.  Now, locked up in the same institution she used to work at, Miranda starts seeing the ghostly girl from the bridge everywhere.  In the shower it attacks her and carves "Not Alone" in her arm, and one evening the apparition beats her nearly senseless in her cell.  What does this ghost want, and how can Miranda set it to rest?

There's a lot that works with this film.  The acting is very good across the board.  Penélope Cruz is very convincing as the whacked out nut job, and Robert Downey Jr. plays his role wonderfully.  He manages to make his character came across as a concerned friend but also a doctor who wants to cure his patient.  He's not too friendly and not too detached.

Berry gives a very convincing performance and plays a scared, confused, and helpless woman.  The problem lies with the script, which paints Dr. Grey as a strong and intelligent woman at the beginning, but as soon as she wakes up in the hospital she seems to have lost all self control and smarts.  As a psychiatrist she must know that ranting and yelling will only make things worse.  Grey should have had the presence of mind to talk things over (after the initial shock) calmly, but she rarely does.

The plot is filled with so many holes and unbelievable situations that it's hard to for viewers to suspend their disbelief.  It's not only the little things, like the fact that the ghost's clue, "Not Alone" is totally useless while she could have said something helpful, but the huge gaping holes.  At one point a guard at the mental hospital, for no reason that's ever explained, not only allows an insane murderer to escape, but he gives her his car keys!  Another disappointing fact is that the big question throughout the film, how is Dr. Grey going to avoid spending the rest of her life in prison or as a mental patient when the police have a bloody axe with her fingerprints on it, is never answered.

To make up for the weak plot and story, director Mathieu Kassovitc was able to create a beautifully creepy film, with stylized lighting and interesting shot that really make some of the scenes feel eerie.  It's too bad that the style isn't able to overcome the lack of substance.

The VC-1 encoded 1080p image has a 1.85:1 aspect ratio and looks very good.  The movie is filled with dark and dimly lit scenes, so there isn't a lot of eye-pop to the film but it's an excellent transfer never the less.  The blacks are inky and deep and details are strong even in the shadows.  There are several scenes that have a slight blue tint to them, but they were doubtlessly filmed that way to create an eerie atmosphere.  The detail is generally very good, but the picture becomes a bit soft in a few places.  Though it's not a glaring defect it is noticeable.  There's also some grain at the end of the movie, and there is some aliasing when the camera pans across the jail cell bars at the beginning.  This causes them to shimmer ever so slightly.

Though it's not a prefect transfer, the flaws are very minor and the movie as a whole looks great.

Audio:

This film comes with a DD 5.1 track as well as French (DD 5.1) and Spanish (DD 2.0) dubs.  There are subtitles in English, Spanish, and French.  While it's disappointing that a lossless track wasn't present, the Dolby audio sounds pretty good.  The whole soundstage is fully used during the film, and it does an excellent job of creating atmosphere.  The viewer is really placed in the middle of the action, with sounds coming from all directions, especially at the beginning of the film.  When Miranda gets out of her car during the rainstorm, the sounds of pounding rain fill the room.  There are more than a few unexpected loud sounds from the rears designed to give viewers a jolt and these work fairly well.

The only problem I had with the audio was the mixing.  There are some places where the ambient sound overwhelms the dialog and it's a bit hard to hear what's being said.  This was the exception rather than the rule and wasn't a big problem.

Extras:

Warner Brothers does the right thing and includes all of the bonus material from their 2-disc special edition SD DVD, although they are presented in 480i/p.  While it would have been nice to see these in HD, I'm just happy that all of the extras are on this Blu-ray.  Unfortunately, this is a case of quantity over quality.  There's a lot here, but not much of it is very entertaining or informative.

First off is a commentary track by director Mathieu Kassovitc and director of photography Matthew Libatique.  This is one of the duller commentary tracks that I've come across, dry to the point of being painful.  The pair talk in detail about technical matters and rarely comment on the story.  People interesting in the nuts and bolts of filmmaking may enjoy this, but other should avoid it.

There are two featurettes that look behind the scenes of the production and run about 23-minutes altogether.  On the Set of Gothika, is a typical fluff piece with the main actors and the producer discussing how scary the movie is and what an honor it is to be working with everyone involved.  I've really grown to hate these worthless promo pieces over the years, and this one isn't really worth watching.  The second one, Painting with Fire, was nearly as bad.  This one looked at the visual effects, all of which were amazing and wonderful, according to the people interviewed.

There's also a series of three spoooooky inmates of the psychiatric hospital that are profiled.  Each one has a patient profile (about 1½ minutes each), a series of drawings they created, and an interview (~3 minutes) where it slowly comes out that something supernatural has occurred.  None of these people appear in the movie, and the cases aren't really that scary at all.  I'm pretty much at a loss as to why these were included.

The disc is rounded out by a music video where Limp Bizkit performs Behind Blue Eyes (originally made famous by The Who) and totally misses the point of the song, a featurette on the making of the video, and a cute clip from MTV's Punk'd.  This last bit runs about 4 minutes and they set it up so that Halle Berry can't get into the premier of Gothika.  It was pretty funny.  There's also a trailer to the film (which is better than the movie in a lot of ways.)

Final Thoughts:

Though there are some problems with the weak script, Gothika is an average horror/suspense film that almost works.  With some good performances and a stylized look that really helps; the movie plays out much better than it probably should.  A lot of the movie's charm would be lost on a second viewing however, where inconsistencies would be more glaring.  The Blu-ray disc looks and sound very good though, making this a great rental.

Note: The images in this review are not from the Blu-ray disc and do not necessarily represent the image quality on the disc.