Film: Gothika

Starring: Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz, Robert Downey Jr, Charles Dutton

Direction: Mathieu Kassovitz

How many ways can Halle Berry scream in hospital corridors before she makes us scream? You can get a fair answer to that question by watching Gothika .

In her Oscar-winning role in Monster's Ball last year she was a working class widow battling poverty and prejudice. In this eagerly awaited follow-up, she yet again plays a victim of circumstances, this time trapped in an excruciating horror tale that unfolds in a mental asylum.

Films about a woman protagonist in distress have a chequered history.

There was Audrey Hepburn, blind and brilliant, being stalked by criminals in Wait Until Dark . And more recently, Sharon Stone ran for her life as she was chased by the mob in Gloria .

Gothika is French director Mathieu Kassovitz's first English film. To have Berry being directed by someone with a proven vision isn't a joke.

She's an actress capable of crossing yawning emotional depths to reach decisive conclusions about an individual's relations with God and nature.

Berry achieved that synthesis in superb shades of black and blue in Monster's Ball. In that film when she told Billy Bob Thornton, "Make me happy", we wanted to help Thornton.

In Gothika , when Berry runs scared we want to run out of the theatre. This superficial, shallow and showy gothic horror tale allows her to do nothing more than run barefoot across darkened eerie corridors.

And she's good at being hysterical. Regrettably the audience has nothing to get excited about.

The screenwriters are so short on true inspiration that they repeatedly resort to cheap shock tactics to get the adrenaline pumping.

But we aren't really looking at Berry's character's suffering, as she turns overnight from a doctor at a mental asylum to a patient. We're too busy licking our own wounds.

Her colleagues, played by some accomplished actors, keep a straight face as co-worker turns to inmate. The audience has a tough time coming to terms with the narration's awkward shifts in perceptions.

The gothic ambience recreated through repeated evocation of thunder, lightening and other sound effects reiterates the film's inherent poverty of ideas.

To be reminded of the devil's presence isn't an indication of biblical history being made. What's being made in Gothika is a tawdrily chic formula horror film that cashes in on Berry's image of the hysterically inclined working woman.

Kassovitz moves forward on the thin ice of his plot with spiked roller-skates. No wonder it all caves in under the weight of its own self-importance.

By the time Berry busts through the asylum in the bid to escape from an otherworldly captivity we share her anguish completely. Gothika is pretty much an agonising horror tale that has us pining for escape.

The cast has some interesting faces, chiefly Penelope Cruz as an asylum inmate with whom Berry bonds. But their sisterly scenes lack vitality and charm.

Robert Downey Jr is happily typecast as a charming alcoholic flirt.