RaverMadness
Bluelighter
Gothika: what's wrong with it (spoilers)
*********** SPOILERS ***********
Before I get to actual complaints about the movie, I have to give a hearty "fuck you" to whoever was responsible for The Sixth Sense, for effectively launching the chick-horror genre.
Chick-horror is drama with minor gore. Let me sum up the plot of the movie for you: Halle Barry is a psychiatrist who works in a women's asylum with about 10 employees, all of whom have large rings of keys that open every door in the facility. Halle Barry's husband is the director of the facility. There's a big fucking rainstorm and Halle Barry crashes her car after swerving to miss a ghostly Vanishing Hitchhiker type. After she wakes up as a patient in the asylum, she learns she's being charged with killing her husband with an axe. She doesn't remember any of this and there's a fat, balding Sheriff who's especially pissed off at her because he was friends with her dead husband. Then, nothing happens for about an hour until Halle Barry escapes, steals a car, and drives to the scene of the crime (a previous escape attempt involved hiding in her office). Then, after some flashbacks, she drives out to a farmhouse which was mentioned in the first five minutes of the film by her husband while she's still alive. It turns out theres a sex dungeon in the basement of a barn, complete with professional lighting, a digital camera and a king-size bed with restraints (how the fuck did the bed get down the trap door? let's hear it for stagehands!). Turns out her husband was making snuff films, and the phrase "not alone" which appears throughout the movie means he had an accomplice. Guess who it is? It's not Robert Downey Jr. or the other likeable character, a mental patient named Chloe. It's the fat balding Sheriff guy. Halle Barry lights him on fire and shoots him in the head, the end. Oh, and she was given all this information through a series of hallucinations given by the Vanishing Hitchhiker Ghost Chick, who was killed by her husband. And at the end, she sees a small ghostly boy who appears on a "MISSING" poster Halle Barry doesn't see, setting the whole thing up for a sequel.
More complaints:
1. Halle Barry can kill two people in cold blood and get away with it without even the slightest bullshit explanation on part of the movie.
2. If you removed the stuff about ghosts and possession, which isn't scary, you'd have enough time to make a halfway decent psychological thriller movie.
3. You don't have to pay lip service to the horror genre by having random shit jumping out that turns out to be an owl. Or a lampshade. Or a ghost. You get the idea about 20 minutes in the movie that anything supernatural that happens isn't of a malevolent nature, so it just doesn't work.
4. Effective horror takes effort. You can't take a half-baked mystery that's easily solved by shooting a guy and throw in some ghosts and bill it as a horror movie. It's not a horror movie in any way whatsoever, other than the ill-defined chick-horror genre I'm describing. Eh.
My real complaint with Gothika is that it's an okay idea terribly executed. Or maybe I'm just sleep-deprived and don't know what I'm talking about.
*********** SPOILERS ***********
Before I get to actual complaints about the movie, I have to give a hearty "fuck you" to whoever was responsible for The Sixth Sense, for effectively launching the chick-horror genre.
Chick-horror is drama with minor gore. Let me sum up the plot of the movie for you: Halle Barry is a psychiatrist who works in a women's asylum with about 10 employees, all of whom have large rings of keys that open every door in the facility. Halle Barry's husband is the director of the facility. There's a big fucking rainstorm and Halle Barry crashes her car after swerving to miss a ghostly Vanishing Hitchhiker type. After she wakes up as a patient in the asylum, she learns she's being charged with killing her husband with an axe. She doesn't remember any of this and there's a fat, balding Sheriff who's especially pissed off at her because he was friends with her dead husband. Then, nothing happens for about an hour until Halle Barry escapes, steals a car, and drives to the scene of the crime (a previous escape attempt involved hiding in her office). Then, after some flashbacks, she drives out to a farmhouse which was mentioned in the first five minutes of the film by her husband while she's still alive. It turns out theres a sex dungeon in the basement of a barn, complete with professional lighting, a digital camera and a king-size bed with restraints (how the fuck did the bed get down the trap door? let's hear it for stagehands!). Turns out her husband was making snuff films, and the phrase "not alone" which appears throughout the movie means he had an accomplice. Guess who it is? It's not Robert Downey Jr. or the other likeable character, a mental patient named Chloe. It's the fat balding Sheriff guy. Halle Barry lights him on fire and shoots him in the head, the end. Oh, and she was given all this information through a series of hallucinations given by the Vanishing Hitchhiker Ghost Chick, who was killed by her husband. And at the end, she sees a small ghostly boy who appears on a "MISSING" poster Halle Barry doesn't see, setting the whole thing up for a sequel.
More complaints:
1. Halle Barry can kill two people in cold blood and get away with it without even the slightest bullshit explanation on part of the movie.
2. If you removed the stuff about ghosts and possession, which isn't scary, you'd have enough time to make a halfway decent psychological thriller movie.
3. You don't have to pay lip service to the horror genre by having random shit jumping out that turns out to be an owl. Or a lampshade. Or a ghost. You get the idea about 20 minutes in the movie that anything supernatural that happens isn't of a malevolent nature, so it just doesn't work.
4. Effective horror takes effort. You can't take a half-baked mystery that's easily solved by shooting a guy and throw in some ghosts and bill it as a horror movie. It's not a horror movie in any way whatsoever, other than the ill-defined chick-horror genre I'm describing. Eh.
My real complaint with Gothika is that it's an okay idea terribly executed. Or maybe I'm just sleep-deprived and don't know what I'm talking about.
Last edited by a moderator:
