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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Thriller > Supernatural > Gothika (HD-DVD)

Gothika (Warner HD-DVD)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B     Extras: C+     Film: B-

 

 

NOTE: This title is now available in a very similar version on Blu-ray.

 

 

As part of the crowd that sees Halle Berry as the talent she is, I thought Mathieu Kassovitz’s Gothika (2003, from the director of Babylon, A.D., reviewed elsewhere on this site) was a better and more interesting commercial supernatural thriller than most took it as during the mixed success of it original theatrical release.

 

Sadly, it did not spawn any sequels or become a minor classic as I thought it had the potential to become, yet it is a film people still talk about, ask me about and still sparks interest simply because thriller films about the spiritual world are few and far between.  Worse still, few work and among a cycle of recent such films (Skeleton Key and The Reaping come to mind), especially with female leads tend to get lost before the narrative has a chance to survive.  Gothika holds together, more obviously so since those other films did not work out.

 

I still enjoy the film, though its attempts at youth appeal via marketing may have cut into a larger audience taking it seriously and even hurting suspension of disbelief, which is why it is being discovered on video and the like years later.  It is no surprise that Warner has made it a relatively early HD release.

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 image is unfortunately from an older digital master, with the studio no doubt making this an early HD release for broadcast/cable HD knowing they had some momentum.  Unfortunately, it is softer throughout than it should be and the effective cinematography from Director of Photography Matthew Libatique, A.S.C., is undercut versus how good it looked in the 35mm release print I screened upon first release.  Though better than the DVD-Video version, this film needs and deserves an HD upgrade down the line.  The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 mix is better enough than the previous Dolby versions, though I wonder if we would get better playback results if the soundmaster was retransferred for Dolby TrueHD and/or DTS MA playback.  This mix is missing detail I know I heard back in 2003.  The combination is disappointing, but I expect this film will continue to gain popularity enough to call of an upgrade in a few years.

 

Extras include a good audio commentary track by Kassovitz & Libatique, two making of documentary/featurettes, Music Video with Berry of the Limp Bizkit remake of The Who classic Behind Blue Eyes, a making of piece on the Video and Berry tormented on the MTV Punk’d show.  That is a more commercial set of goodies than ones with serious depth, but they have their moments.  The main thing is the film, which you should catch if you have not yet seen it.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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