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Halle Berry’s Miranda Gray is a brilliant young doctor in a women’s psychiatric prison who wakes to find herself locked up as a patient in her own ward and wondering how she got there. No doubt she and the rest of the talented cast had a similar experience when they first laid eyes on this embarrassing gobbler. Perhaps Berry and Penélope Cruz, who plays Chloë, a sexually abused patient, saw this as a good opportunity to cry and scream a lot and appear in wet, flimsy clothing. The tears start in earnest when Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr., here a cross between Anthony Perkins and Jerry Lewis) informs Miranda that’s she’s in an observation cell because of the nasty things she’s done to her husband, Doug (Charles S. Dutton), the head of the unit. "I’m not deluded," Miranda insists. "I’m possessed!" The spirit of a dead girl has been tormenting her, bouncing her off walls and luring her to some revelation. How can a scientist be rational under such circumstances? Nonetheless, she perseveres to uncover a truth so terrifying and so obvious that anyone able to remain awake would have figured it out long before. Hot-shot French director Mathieu Kassovitz has, it’s clear, been watching films in the genre from Frankenstein to Cat People to Se7en. But the only truly scary moment is when Dutton, who is twice as old as Berry and three times her size, pulls an Adrien Brody. (95 minutes) At the Boston Common, the Fenway, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle and in the suburbs.
BY PETER KEOUGH
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