By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Halle Berry had an interesting run in the 2000s. She was the first Storm, a Bond Girl, won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and starred in Catwoman. Tucked away, between the highest of highs in Monster’s Ball, and the lowest of lows, that would be Catwoman, lies Gothika, a psychological horror that puts an emphasis on the psychological. It’s now streaming on Netflix, where it’ll likely hit the top ten before all is said and done since it also co-stars a small, independent film star you may have heard of: Robert Downey Jr.
A Prison Haunting Revenge Thriller Whodunit Mystery
Berry plays Dr. Miranda Grey, who sees a ghost on the way home from work, passes out, and wakes up as a patient in the prison where she works. Accused of murdering her husband (Charles S. Dutton), her colleague Dr. Pete Graham (Downey) tries to treat her, but gets nowhere thanks to the continued interference of a ghost…and Miranda’s insistence she didn’t kill anyone. She finds a patient, Chloe (Penelope Cruz) being assaulted inside her cell, but no one believes her, which only eats away at her fraying sanity.
Gothika plays with idea that everything is inside Miranda’s head, and that she really is being haunted by a young ghost, at the exact same time. It’s a deft juggling act that makes you think Pete is a villain in one scene, and then that he’s only doing his job in the other. By the end of the story, the film picks a side, and manages to untangle the complex psychological web with a satisfying ending.
More Than The Sum Of Its Parts
Halle Berry carries the movie, but Robert Downey Jr., making his return to Hollywood after 3 years away, keeps pace alongside her and makes you wish the two starred in more projects together. They’re helped by the oppressive environment of the prison psych ward and every single serial killer, woman in prison movie, ghost story, and wronged woman movie trope you can think of. Gothika is built from the ground up out of parts from other movies, but when you go this far into the absurd, it works.
At least it does now. When Gothika was released it was at least a little profitable, bringing in a box office haul of $144 million against a $40 million budget. The catch is, that’s without marketing, which during Halle Berry’s rise, was extensive.
If Halle Berry and Robert Downey Jr. starred in a horror movie today, it would break the internet. Now that Gothika is on Netflix it’s not a question on if the cult classic will be a streaming hit again, but rather, when. As for the two stars, Robert Downey Jr. is appearing later this year in a small budget film, Avengers: Doomsday, while Halle Berry recently starred opposite another Avenger, Chris Hemsworth, in the crime thriller Crime 101. Who knows, if Storm appears in Secret Wars, we might get all three of them on the screen at once.
Gothika is now streaming on Netflix.
