My Thoughts on Gothika...

A movie that claims to be about the supernatural and paranormal, but delivers different from what the viewer was expecting. A woman in a federal penitentiary begins telling her case worker (Miranda) that Satan is raping her in her jail cell. Miranda, of course, believes that she is hallucinating, or is otherwise mentally unstable because the woman has said such things before. The complication comes when Miranda encounters a girl in the middle of the road on her way home. She wakes up three days later in the penitentiary where she had worked, to discover that she is now a patient because she killed her husband three nights before, the same night that she met the girl on the road. Through supernatural experiences with this girl whom she had met, Miranda learns that the girl had died at the hands of a rapist and that the girl had possessed Miranda and caused her to kill her husband the same night. In the search for the rapist, Miranda discovers the possibility that this may be the rapist whom her subject had been referring to as if he were the devil. Fortunately there is a twist; disappointingly, it has nothing to do with the supernatural. Miranda discovers the lair that the rapist used to torture his victims in all manner of atrocities. In the lair she finds a video camera with a tape in it. The video is of her husband raping the girl who Miranda met on the road. Apparently, the girl had possessed Miranda so that she could get her revenge on Miranda’s husband. Miranda eventually discovers that her husband had an accomplice who is still raping women who are in this penitentiary. With mystical aide of the girl, Miranda finds out who the accomplice is and kills him while defending herself against him.

There is very little in the way of visual effects, although the movie does do a couple of neat things. The most notable visual effect is the way that the dead girl is filmed. The effect is hard to describe, but is quite noticeable in the movie Thirteenth Ghost. The most notable things about the movie overall was the disappointing gimmick. The movie was advertised as being a supernatural film after the nature of Thirteenth Ghost or Sixth Sense, something like that, but the supernatural plays a very neutral roll in the story; it could just as easily have been anything else that gave Miranda the clues that she needed.

Overall, it was worth watching. The actress who plays Miranda does a very good job of making the viewer question whether she is crazy or not. It was well made and well executed, but it had a gimmick and I hate gimmicks.