Gothika

Gothika
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mathieu Kassovitz
Produced by	Joel Silver Robert Zemeckis Susan Levin
Written by	Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring	Halle Berry Robert Downey, Jr. Charles S. Dutton John Carroll Lynch Bernard Hill Penélope Cruz
Music by	John Ottman Lior Rosner
Cinematography	Matthew Libatique
Edited by	Yannick Kergoat
Production company	Dark Castle Entertainment
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures (North America) Columbia Pictures (International)
Release date	November 21, 2003
Running time	98 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million
Box office	$141.6 million

Gothika is a 2003 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz and written by Sebastian Gutierrez. Halle Berry plays a psychiatrist in a women's mental hospital who wakes up one day to find herself on the other side of the bars, accused of having murdered her husband.

The film was first released on November 21, 2003 in the United States. At the time of its release, Gothika was the most successful film from Dark Castle Entertainment with $141.6 million.

Psychiatrist Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) who works at the Woodward Penitentiary For Women, has a car accident after trying to avoid a girl (Kathleen Mackey) on a road during a stormy night. She rushes to try to help the girl. The girl turns out to be a ghost and possesses Miranda's body. Miranda next wakes up in the very hospital she works for, but as a patient treated by her co-worker, Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey, Jr.). Drugged and confused, she remembers nothing of what happened after the car accident. To her horror, she learns that her husband Douglas (Charles S. Dutton) was brutally murdered and that she is the primary suspect. While Miranda copes with her new life in the hospital, the ghost uses her body to carry out messages (most noticeably, she carves the words "Not Alone" into Miranda's arm), which leads her former colleagues to believe Miranda is suicidal and is inflicting the wounds on herself.

Meanwhile, Miranda bonds with fellow inmate and former patient, Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz). Several times in sessions, Chloe had claimed that she'd been raped while in the hospital, but Miranda had always attributed these stories to mental illness. One night, the door to Miranda's room in the hospital is opened by the ghost that has been haunting her. When she passes Chloe's room in the hospital, she can hear the rape occurring and momentarily sees a man's chest pressed against the window. The man's chest bears a tattoo of an Anima Sola. Miranda realizes that Chloe was not making up these stories and, when she sees Chloe the next day, she apologizes and the two embrace. Chloe warns Miranda that her attacker said he was going to target Miranda next. Miranda begins regaining some of her memories bit by bit and slowly comes to remember herself killing her husband. She realizes that the ghost had used her body to murder Douglas, thus making Miranda the patsy for his murder. This is why all of the physical evidence points to Miranda.