GOTHIKA
Year: 2003
USA: Warner Bros
UK: Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
Cast: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr, Penelope Cruz, Charles S Dutton, John Carroll Lynch, Bernard Hill, Dorian Harewood, Bronwen Mantel, Kathleen Mackey, Matthew G Taylor, Michel Perron, Andrea Sheldon, Anana Rydvald, Laura Mitchell, Amy Sloan, Noël Burton, Benz Antoine, Andy Bradshaw, Jason Cavalier, Jasson Finney, Terry Simpson, Kwasi Songui, Caroline Van Vlaardingen, Al Vandecruys, Noah Bernett
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Country: USA
USA: 95 mins
UK: 98 mins
USA Rated: R for violence, brief language and nudity
UK Certificate: 15 contains moderate violence and horror
USA Release Date: 21 November 2003
UK Release Date: 2 April 2004
Synopsis
A brilliant and respected criminal psychologist, Dr Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is an expert at knowing what is rational, what is logical and what is sane.
Under the direction of her husband (Charles S Dutton), the chief administrator to the psychiatric ward at the Woodward Penitentiary for Women, Miranda treats dangerously disturbed patients like Chloe (Penelope Cruz), an intensely charismatic murderess whose confessions of satanic torture are dismissed by the judicious doctor as the psychotic meanderings of a paranoid mind.
But Miranda's comfortable marriage and stable life are thrust into terrifying jeopardy after a cryptic encounter with a mysterious young girl leads to a nightmare beyond her worst imagination.
When Miranda wakes up from the horrific incident, she is shocked to discover that her husband has been murdered and the bloody evidence points directly at her. Unable to fathom having committed an unmotivated attack of such sheer brutality against a man she loved and admired, Miranda suddenly finds herself confined to Woodward alongside the highly unstable patients she used to treat.
With no memory of the night in question, except for fractured visions of the hauntingly enigmatic girl, the doctor's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Her claims of innocence are seen as the beginnings of a deep descent into madness by her former colleagues like Dr Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr), Miranda's sympathetic but sceptical co-worker who is wrestling with issues of his own.
Forced to rely on her instincts rather than facts, Miranda begins to believe that she has been possessed by a supernatural force determined to exact revenge at the expense of her sanity. As Chloe draws her deeper into her own personal hell, Miranda must determine if she is being driven to madness .. or closer to the truth.