'GOTHIKA' STRAINS LIMITS OF PLOTTING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

OUT OF ITS MIND, but not quite in the right way for a horror movie set in a prison psycho ward, ``Gothika'' keeps trying to lay out a plot whose every point makes you question its plausibility.

French director Mathieu Kassovitz keeps trying to distract us from this fundamental flaw with an overabundance of motion and style. But there are too many ``What is that doing there?'' and ``Why did s/he do that?'' moments for even the busiest mise en scene to gloss over.

But the storytelling, which is attributed to Sebastian Gutierrez, is not ``Gothika's'' only credibility liability. There is also the matter of convincing casting.

Halle Berry brings her usual histrionic aplomb to most of the picture as a spirit-beset woman who can't remember if she did or didn't horribly murder her husband as evidence indicates. But it's her initial incarnation as an analytical, dismissive prison psychiatrist that never coalesces. Berry is too empathetic to pull off someone who has to be coldly skeptical of everything her criminal patients tell her. And, let's be frank, she's too glamorous to seem like anything other than a movie star going through the motions of the kind of job no one like her would ever want ... or get.

This can't help but set Dr. Miranda Grey off on the wrong foot. But that particular situation is soon remedied when, one cliched and stormy night, she finds a battered girl standing on a deserted country road who bursts into flames when Grey tries to comfort her.

The next thing she knows, Grey awakens in an observation cell in the haunted-mansion-style prison she used to roam freely (y'know, the one with that staple of penitentiary design, an indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, apparently there for the sole purpose of enabling her inevitable escape).

Seems that when she got home after the storm, Miranda butchered her boss and beloved husband Dr. Doug Grey (Charles S. Dutton, also miscast as a guy who could conceivably get Halle Berry). Now, her former colleague Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr. - and need we possibly have to explain the miscasting here?) is treating her just like she used to treat the other inmates; i.e., like she's crazy.

As for those homicidal patients, not enough is made of the peril their ex-doctor faces as the newest part of their population. Instead, the father- murdering Chloe's tales of midnight rapes by demons start making sense to Grey, who's having her own problems with some supernatural entity that likes to carve the words ``not alone'' on her flesh.

Chloe is played by Berry's beauty equal Penelope Cruz, and one of ``Gothika's'' undeniably bold strengths is its presentation of both women in as haggard a manner as their characters' circumstances dictate. Those expecting a girls-gone-crazy-behind-bars romp will be sorely and deservedly disappointed; even the genre-requirement group shower sequence is as carnally unappetizing as it could be, as well as one of the film's few truly scary scenes.

On the other hand, Kassovitz misplaces his best opportunities for true terror - Dr. Grey's fear of losing her own sanity among the mad - in a welter of over-complicated mystery, ghost movie shocks and that extended escape sequence. The outcome defies all inner logic of a movie even as self-diverting as this one. The old ``Why'd he do that?'' questions grow worse as the action sweeps toward its climax. If a modern horror movie is even going to bother with a plot - and in this ``Freddy vs. Jason'' age, that's a rare and valuable thing to attempt - elements that lead to snickering dismissal must be rigorously guarded against.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

GOTHIKA - Two and one half stars

(R: violence, nudity, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Charles S. Dutton, Penelope Cruz, John Carroll Lynch, Bernard Hill.

Director: Mathieu Kassovitz.

Running time: 1 hr. 35 min.

Playing: Citywide.

In a nutshell: Classy production values and an interesting (but not fully explored) psychological angle can't prevent this supernatural whodunit from descending into illogical hokum.