Gothika (2003)

I'm probably going to get shit for this, but I've always liked Gothika.  I'm not typically a fan of supernatural movies, especially those that involve jittery spastic ghosts, but somehow this flick just played out well.  I guess it's like some of the things I liked about 8MM, combined with ghosts, and sort of like a better version of that crappy Angelina Jolie movie where she gets trapped in the mental institution against her will.  Something about being somewhere you don't belong and not being able to explain your way out of it sort of gives me anxiety. 

Gothika (never quite got the reason for the title) is about a woman named Miranda (Halle Berry) who is a doctor at a women's mental institution.  After a fairly routine day at work, which includes her colleague Pete (Robert Downey Jr.) looking sex-ay, she leaves to return home to her husband, Doug (Charles Dutton).  The last thing she remembers is getting into a minor accident and seeing an injured young woman standing in the road.  She tries to help the woman, but instead wakes up days later in the institution in which she was formerly an employee.

What's the catch?  Miranda's husband is dead and she is the main suspect.  She desperately tries to explain that she had no part of the murder, but of course, the evidence all points to her.  As she delves deeper into the reasons behind her husband's demise, she realizes that there are more people involved, dead and alive, than she could have imagined.

Sure, this movie gets a little cheesy at times, and it's more mainstream than many movies that I favor, but I've just always gotten a kick out of this one, Hollywood stars be damned.