YOU know that ho-ho sign, You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps?

Criminal psychologist Dr Miranda Grey has entered the grey area of not being able to tell the distinction between mad and sane. Meanwhile, Oscar-winner Halle Berry has entered the grey area of not being able to tell a good role from a duff one, and Gothika looks to be an act of sheer madness.

Not a lot makes sense in this horror movie, not least Berry's decision to take on the role of Dr Grey, the one bright light in the gloom of the institution for the mentally unstable and insane.

Her medical colleagues (Robert Downey Jr, Bernard Hill) seem as nutty as Topics, and should she take note of Chloe (an uncomfortable Penelope Cruz), a patient who foresees satanic torture.

Dr Grey is brisk and Berry looks as impossibly bonny as ever until, one rainy night, the ghost of a distressed young girl stands in the path of her car. The doctor stops, as is obligatory in such hokum thrillers, whereupon the girl spontaneously combusts.

If seeing the dead get the hell out of here were not enough bad news, Dr Grey awakes the next morning, not at home, but behind glass in a cell, banged up in the Woodward Penitentiary for Women for the murder of her husband (Charles S Dutton), whose career as head of the psychiatric ward has just been terminated in the most brutal way.

Trouble is, she can remember none of this, and the course of pills is not going to help her powers of recall. Is she delusional or possessed, as she believes, or is there a darker agenda, mounted by her colleagues? Who is the blonde girl she keeps seeing, and why is Not Alone carved on her arm when she takes a shower?

There is the rump of a worthwhile psychological thriller here, and French director Matthieu Kassovitz stoically works his way through the tick box of scary moves for scary movies but the shock tactics are B-movie old and the plot is not only baffling but ridiculous. Berry's frantic character is as grey as her name, Downey Jr is granted no character development and Cruz can't wait to exit. Just like this reviewer.

Updated: 09:19 Friday, April 02, 2004