With its world premiere occurring at this year’s FrightFest, the Pierre Tsigaridis directed Traumatika is a fusion of horror subgenres exploring how trauma roots itself and insidiously spreads throughout generations.
Starring Rebekah Kennedy as Abigail, a young woman whose father has made the devastating mistake of opening up a relic that serves as a containment for a child abuse demon. After bearing the brunt of her possessed father’s assaults, Abigail isolates herself in an abandoned house where she herself soon falls victim to the possessive powers of the entity, with murderous results.
With an opening highly reminiscent of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Traumatika lays the groundwork for a possession film that seeks to go several disturbing steps further than the average demonic possession movie whilst exploring the idea of childhood abuse and trauma, a theme which is stereotypical of the horror subgenre. The cinematography is grimy, dirty, and dark, representative of the grim hopelessness of the situation presented, and had the film continued to concentrate on Abigail’s descent into hell, as well as her consequential crimes against the local town’s children, Traumatika would have had the potential to be a forceful entry in the genre of possession horror, standing alongside films like The Possession of Michael King (2014) and The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014).
However, halfway through the film, Traumatika drastically switches not only the pov of the narration, but also transforms into a different subgenre entirely. Cut to several years later, Abigail’s now grown up little sister played by Emily Goss is being stalked by an unknown assailant as she prepares to launch her new book detailing the life and crimes of her older sister. The shift from disturbing possession to cringey slasher horror is unfortunately not the smoothest of transitions, creating the feeling of watching two completely different films made by two very different filmmakers.
Despite its promising first half, Traumatika is severely let down by the abandonment of the possession plot line for it only to re-establish itself as a diluted slasher suffering from a lack of solid identity.
1.5 Screams out of 5.
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