So last night I watched Gothika, and I have to say, I was impressed.  This movie was far better than I expected it to be.  As ghost stories go, the direction the movie took was fairly predictable, but the apparitions were creepy and unsettling.

Doctor Miranda Grey (played by Halle Berry) is working with Cleo, a traumatized patient at a mental hospital played by Penelope Cruz.  Cleo says that satan is visiting her in her cell and raping her each night, and of course Doctor Grey believes she is delusional. Cleo accuses Miranda of not trusting her.  Miranda counters that Cleo must learn to trust her, if she is ever going to be able to help her.  "Never trust anyone who thinks you're crazy" is the response that will come to have special meaning for Doctor Grey.

Her husband, and the director of the institution, Doug, played by the always-rivetting Charles Dutton, advises her on the case.

A few hours after Dutton's character leaves for the day, Miranda makes her way out into the stormy night and, due to a detour has to take an alternate route home.  Shortly after passing through a covered bridge, she narrowly misses a young girl standing in the middle of the road and careens off the road into a tree.  Stumbling from her car she staggers back to the girl.

"Are you alright?"

Getting closer we can see the girl has been cut and beaten and she begins screaming.

"It's alright I'm a doctor, you're going to be okay."

Then the girl lays her hands on Grey's face, and the doctor is suddenly engulfed in flame, and awakens.  She is in an observation cell in her own mental institution.  Her former colleague, played by Robert Downey Jr, says she has been catatonic for days.  Apparently her husband is dead.  Apparently she killed him.

Berry manages to portray the difficult role of a psychiatric doctor, firmly grounded in science, thrust into the world of insanity, where the supernatural is very real.

This movie drew me in.  Even in places when I could see where it was going, I was not disappointed by Gothika.  Perhaps you won't be either.  I've definitely seen better ghost stories, but this was definitely good enough to entertain me.

If you have a soft spot for creepy ghost stories, definitely see this film.