“In Psychology There Are Five Forms of Childhood Trauma: Physical Neglect, Witnessing Violence, Emotional, Physical, and Sexual Abuse”

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the horror genre has gone through its ups and downs.The horror community is having a bit of a resonance these days. With new voices like Zach Cregger, the Phillipou Brothers, and Michael Shanks having a bit of a moment right now. Established horror filmmakers have moved on to greener pastures, but that doesn’t mean new directors with trusted and disturbing visions aren’t coming down the pipeline. That’s the case with Pierre Tsigaridis, the French director, who is a man of many trades. He puts them all to good use here with Traumatika, a film so dark and disturbing that theater goers weren’t even allowed to see the trailer during previews before their movies. That’s pretty crazy!

This film is separated into three segments. The first takes place in Sinai Peninsula, Egypt 1910, and sets the rest of the story up. The bulk of the film takes place in 2003 in Pasadena, California. This is where police respond to a call for distress by a child named Mikey (Ranen Navat) he is being held captive by a disfigured young woman, Abigail (Rebekah Kennedy). She has been possessed by an entity known as Volpaazu (voiced/played by Maxime Rancon). This demon takes children for its own nefarious reasons. The third of the story takes place twenty years later in 2003, where the adult sister of the other girl deals with repercussions from the past. As the saying goes “Your past comes back to haunt you”. 

With any movie, there has to be a tie or reason for the things that are going on to be happening. A way for filmmakers to do that is by creating a macguffin. In this movie, the macguffin is an action sculpture/artifact.  This is what sets off all the events in the film. Unlike other movies,  this macguffin is seen a handful of times but not referred to as much. What happens with the macguffin is more important to the story. How this item created all the craziness that happens throughout the story and film. There was an entity that came out of it and possessed people. That’s the crux of the story and why it’s so good. I love the use of a good macguffin, and this one was pretty good.

The director assembled a pretty good cast of relative unknowns for this film. That was a good idea because it helped me concentrate on what was going on in the story. All the cast in all three segments, small and large roles alike, did a good job of selling this story. Unlike something else I saw very recently. The standouts for me were Kennedy as the disfigured, possessed sister. She was pretty awesome in this role. She had to do a lot of the heavy lifting as far as progressing the story forward with her character.  Navat as the main kid, and Emily Gross as the younger sister who’s all grown up in the third act of the movie as well. I genuinely like most of the people in the cast. All except the television talk show host in the third act. She was annoying. Maybe that was the point, though.

With horror films, there has to be a suspension of disbelief but also a believability to the story and characters. The director did a great job with what seems like not much of a budget. He used a lot of horror tropes like dark rooms and some walking through looking for someone else or something.This scene worked despite the fact I’ve seen it done a thousand times before. Putting masks or hoods over a character’s face created mystery around them and their purpose for being. Putting fake blood on people’s bodies and in a tub showed some shock and awe. That’s what a director directing a horror film is going for. All these things and more combined for a pretty crazy experience.

There is an opening scripture that the film uses to explain childhood trauma. That’s the main thing this film is going for. The writers, who are the director and one of the actors in the movie, are trying to show the viewers the different levels of childhood trauma.They did a good job of that. I was concerned about all the children that were seen on screen.This movie didn’t go as far as another film I saw this summer but it was pretty effective in showing how the kids in the film had it. I grew up with a tough upbringing and experienced some pretty traumatic stuff, but not to the extent these kids did in this story. My hat goes off the writers and director, who accomplished this without going over the top.

The technical aspects of the movie worked for me as well. There were sound effects that sounded pretty creepy. The camera work varied from different aspect ratios depending on what was going on in the story. The cinematography was dark during the night scenes, but that was probably to help create a sense of dread. Overall, the film looked and sounded pretty good, considering it probably was low-budget filmmaking.  I applaud the creators of this film and story because this looked like a pretty professional production to me.

Traumatika is definitely going to traumatize a lot of the viewers who see this movie. Horror fans are going to love it. It mixes a lot of the popular tropes of horror films but does it in an interesting way. The three separate story arcs worked as well. They showed how an evil incarnate can wait and be patient to strike on its victims.The cast, which was relatively unknown to me, was pretty good. I genuinely cared about what happened to some of them. The technical aspects worked well with the story that was being told. The story as a whole was pretty good. I was completely immersed in what was going on in the movie. Horror fans are going to have a new Halloween obsession this year, and it’s going to be very traumatic!

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen