This is one of the best horror/thriller movies ive ever seen . One of the few movies that actually has a good story in it

A repressed female psychiatrist wakes up as a patient in the asylum where she worked, with no memory of why she is there or what she has done. Despite a talented cast 'Gothika' is a film with no logic, slow pacing and a terrible script and even with big names like Berry and Junior the end result was a big pile of mess. (0/10)

I don't get the hate for this film... I find it a very good mystery ghost story. Halle Berry really shows what a fine actress she is here - she brings out the emotions of her character Miranda Grey very well.Miranda is a psychiatrist working in a asylum, works closely with one prisoner named Chloe. Chloe seems "out there" and Miranda think she's in denial of what has happened to her, what she has done. Miranda is married to the Dr. Douglas Grey - a man many call "The Boss". Dr. Grey's best friend is Sheriff Ryan, while Miranda's closest friend seems to be Pete Graham (who is also a psychiatrist at the asylum).One dark and stormy night, Miranda is driving home - there is sinkhole in the road and the police tell Miranda she should go home by the way of the little white bridge. Miranda heads over that bridge and the next thing she knows, she's in a cell at the very asylum she works at.I won't give away what happens to first time viewers... but if you like a good ghost story then give this film view.9/10

Matthieu Kassovitz's underrated chiller Gothika is thick with a horror atmosphere that goes straight for the jugular in terms of scares, a psychological ghost story that actually raises hairs a frightens, or at least did for me. It sometimes sacrifices logic for style, but what style it's got! Any horror flick set in an asylum just has to to be cloaked in workable atmosphere to be effective, and this one is positively dripping with it, hence the evocative title. Halle Berry plays a laid back psychiatrist who wakes up one day in the asylum she works at, only now a patient. She's told she brutally murdered her husband (Charles S. Dutton) yet has no memory of the act. As if that weren't a terrifying enough situation for her to be in, she starts having waking nightmares, haunted by a gnarly ghost of a girl (Kathleen Mackey) with mysterious ties to the facility's past. Her colleague and friend (Robert Downey Jr. gives the dour proceedings his usual chipper pep) seems unable to help her. A guard (John Carroll Lynch) is hostile towards her, angry at the loss of her husband who was his friend. An erratic fellow patient (a de-glammed Penelope Cruz) seems to know more than her vacuous babbling would suggest. The asylum Director (Bernard Hill, excellent) is perplexed by the whole situation. It's a twisty funhouse of a plot that probably piles on one stark plot turn too many, they're nevertheless fun to be left aghast by as the rattle by with little regard for plausibility. Berry is convincing in her tormenting position, radiating desperation and resilience that claws at the cobwebs of insanity. Kassovitz piles on the Gothic atmosphere relentlessly, and it really works, until we have a visual palette that looks like the dark underside of Tim Burton's unconscious mind. The ghostly scenes have a threatening, intense edge to them and feel unnervingly realistic, putting us right in the hot seat with wide eyed Berry. Style over substance? Maybe. Okay, probably. But I care not. If the style, composition and palette are enough to draw me into a story, I can roll with it. This one imprints troubling negatives on the celluloid which latch themselves onto your psyche. Maybe it works well because it's got a European director, and they're more in tune with the supernatural in general. Maybe it just does a nice job at being effective horror. Either way, I enjoyed.