Halle Berry is Dr. Miranda, a prison psychiatrist. Among her many tasks is counseling Chloe (Penelope Cruz), who’s convinced the devil is raping her. Miranda’s smug sureness of who’s crazy and who’s not is challenged when after an encounter with a ghostly girl, she wakes up in a cell at her work, suspected of murdering her husband (Charles S. Dutton). She gets firsthand experience of what it’s like to be insane, as she keeps having visions of the girl. Miranda has to figure out what the ghost wants (does it have anything to do with Chloe’s rapist?) and who really killed her husband.
I read a negative review of this movie on Campblood.org, and though its editor Buzz is my hero (soooo much funnier and more insightful than me), I disagree with him in regards to how terrible he says it is. It has its good points. It has fine acting, a plot that makes sense, and a decent score by John Ottman. While it’s not scary, it is creepy in that Miranda’s well-ordered world is falling apart around her and she begins acting like her patients.
My own complaints about the movie stem from disbelieving that Miranda would be incarcerated in her own workplace and that her colleague Pete (Robert Downey Jr.) would be her doctor. I remember from my former psych major days that it’s unethical to receive treatment from someone you know. It ruined the movie for me the first time I saw it, but I like it a little better every time I see it. I also think it’s brave of Berry to spend most of the movie looking like a mess.
