Gothika

A psychiatrist at a prison for the criminally insane (Halle Berry) meets a wounded girl one night in the rain—suddenly the girl bursts into flames, and the shrink wakes up an inmate in her own prison, where they tell her she’s murdered her husband. Good performances by Berry and Robert Downey Jr. as a sympathetic colleague, plus a few delicious scares, don’t make up for the parade of howlers: a setting that looks more like 18th-century Bedlam than a modern-day institution, a story (written by Sebastian Gutierrez) as nonsensical as the title, and a late plot twist and ending that are simply ridiculous. Charles S. Dutton tackles the thankless role of Berry’s dead husband, and Penelope Cruz does a hammy turn as one of Berry’s patients turned fellow prisoner. Mathieu Kassovitz directs with a heavy hand.