Halle Berry may star in worse films than this idiotic horror thriller, but it would be a brave soul who bet on it. The pitch is promising: a glamorous criminal psychologist (the star) wakes from unconsciousness to find herself imprisoned in the asylum she's employed by, accused of butchering her husband (Charles Dutton). However, that's where the interest ends, as Gothika descends into a witless whodunit where the biggest crime has been committed against cinema. Do not waste your life watching this.

As with her Oscar-winning turn in the overrated Monster's Ball, Berry does dowdy, frizzing her hair and sporting a wild-eyed stare while wondering if she's really kerazy. Presumably perfecting a look of bewilderment wasn't a problem, as the script is incomprehensible - a rash of muddled motivations, cardboard characters, and secondhand ideas.

That the films it appears to rip off include such competent but uninspiring pulp as Kiss The Girls and Red Dragon indicates the ambitions here. Director Mathieu Kassovitz made the brilliant La Haine, a character-driven thriller seething with energy and inspiration, so it's a mystery how he made a movie so immensely boring.

"THE FILM MAKES NO SENSE"

There is the odd cheap jump of the bursting-a-balloon variety, but nothing to truly shock or scare - other than that Berry, hot off her Academy Award, should choose such schlock. Even within its own implausible world the film makes no sense, with the star's attacks by a supernatural spectre eventually revealed as entirely illogical. Every other character, meanwhile, is set up as suspect, although the real psycho might as well have Guilty written in neon around their neck.

Berry's predicament might have been exploited to explore how inmates treat someone who was once in charge. But the only criminal given a character is a loon played by Penélope Cruz; a line of hers worth repeating when considering memories of this diabolical film: "Sometimes I wake up screaming."