It was sad, but it had to be done. After a steady diet of horror films throughout my, uh, youth, I went through a voluntary detox/rehab period to rid myself of the addiction. (Horror flicks bring on gray hair and wrinkles, doncha know?) Actually, it wasn't that hard. Rare is the truly well-made horror movie and I had already caught on to the fact that, in terms of scare factors (violence, gore, boo!), less is definitely more.
The story -- coherent, imaginative and satisfying -- should fill in the gaps, but few directors seem to bother anymore. Case in point: "Gothika." It starts out full of promise, only to soon run out of fuel, leaving the cast stranded in the middle of a horror-flick wasteland of scary cliches, a nonsensical plot and artery-hardening lines.
Not the best of vehicles for the likes of Academy Award winner Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr. (Is it my imagination, or do they look like they were sooo ready to call it quits -- only the contract clause didn't let them? Now that's what I call scary.) Halle plays Dr. Miranda Grey, a psychiatrist working in a women's correctional institute. One of her patients is Chloe (Cruz), who has been imprisoned after killing her abusive stepfather. Now she tells Miranda that she is being raped almost nightly by "the devil." Miranda writes this off as hallucination due to excessive medication and she also notes that the other patients are being given far too many pills. She has a chat with the warden, Doug (Charles Dutton), who also happens to be her husband, but he casually dismisses Chloe's story with a creepy smile before going off on an errand.
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