To guide Berry though Miranda’s torturous journey and balance Gothika’s sophisticated hybrid of suspense, drama and terror, Silver tapped acclaimed French actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz, who won the Palme d’Or for Best Director at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival for La Haine (Hate), his incendiary drama of life in the housing projects surrounding Paris.
After screening Kassovitz’s 2002 action thriller TheCrimson Rivers, Silver asked Levin to set up a meeting with the young auteur in Paris. "It’s very rare for Joel to sit down with a young filmmaker, especially if he doesn’t have a specific project in mind," Levin acknowledges. "It has to be someone he really sees potential in and wants to work with. Like Joel, Mathieu has an incredible love and knowledge of movies. They connected and decided to find something to do together."
"I wanted to get a very special director for this picture, and Mathieu is very passionate and talented," Silver says. "He really knows how to create a mood, how to tell a story. When I sent him the Gothika script, he immediately responded to the material and had a vision of what he wanted this movie to be."
"Sebastian’s script is really well-written, smarter than average, and very scary," enthuses Kassovitz, the son of auteur Peter Kassovitz (Jakob the Liar). "The characters are not just bait for a crazed killer. They are intelligent, coherent, interesting people. When Joel told me that Halle Berry was going to play Miranda, it blew my mind. An actress of her caliber takes this material to another level, and it was up to the rest of us to rise to the occasion."
Kassovitz and Silver cast charismatic Oscar-nominated actor Robert Downey Jr. in the role of Dr. Pete Graham, Miranda’s sympathetic but skeptical coworker who is wrestling with issues of his own. "Pete has this unrequited love for Miranda," Downey explains, "but he knows he can’t go there because not only is she a colleague, but her husband is their boss."
Miranda struggles to convince Pete of her sanity as her behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Says Silver, who Downey jokingly credits as his "first boss outside the restaurant business" for casting him in the 1985 hit John Hughes comedy Weird Science: "Pete really wants to help Miranda, he really wants to believe her, but every step of the way she does things that he just can’t justify. He can’t trust her, he can’t keep supporting her. And it really strains how he feels about her, both personally and professionally."
"Miranda goes from having this unspoken connection with Pete to wondering if she can trust him," Berry adds. "It’s difficult for her or the audience to know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy."
"Robert is smart and he has amazing charisma," notes Kassovitz. "At the same time, there is an edge to his personality that he put into the character, and you can really feel it in the film."
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