This is largely a forgotten movie, and it has both good and bad points, but it ends up more fun than failure. The plot concerns a young woman who witnesses a murder and then has amnesia for the next 6 years. When she returns to the place of the crime, her memory gradually starts to come back, and the mystery of what happens starts to reveal itself.
"Trauma is both filmed and titled like one of the Hammer Films "psychological thrillers" of the same era, but it looks like it had way less budget to play with. This doesn't impact the story too much because the sets, lighting and locations all work pretty well. The murder scene at the start of the movie is quite nasty, and the black and white photography looks pretty classy. But, oh my god what really skewers the movie is the terrible acting. Mostly by the actress playing the central character of Emmaline, who cannot seem to manage more than about 2-3 expressions. Most notably in the pivotal murder scene near the beginning, the movie's title suddenly blasts onto the screen over freeze-frame of her face, which holds an expression of nothing more than sleepy disinterest. I think the director could have at least shouted at her to look a bit more...well... traumatised! She maintains this lack of emotional depth throughout the rest of the movie...there's just nothing going on in there, despite the character supposedly going through the agony of trying to recall her memory, you'd think she was just wondering what flavour of ice cream to buy at the local store.
The rest of the cast do little better. Emmaline's love interest Craig is acted slightly better then her, but he's very one-dimensional, sadly he plays in a lot of scenes with a work assistant, who does an acting job equally as bad as Emmaline. Nearly all the rest of the cast are equally poor. All of this would probably sink the film, but for the fact that it has a twist ending that I did not guess. The revelations in the last few 10-15 minutes of running time were good fun, and it worked for me, even if a lot of inconsistencies that came before it are never explained.
Currently not officially available on DVD or Bluray, you'll have a hard job finding a clear print of this to watch. I had to make do with a pretty poor copy. A good clean up and polish might even make this marketable again as a curiosity. But please don't believe any review that describes it as "maybe better than Psycho"!
"Trauma is both filmed and titled like one of the Hammer Films "psychological thrillers" of the same era, but it looks like it had way less budget to play with. This doesn't impact the story too much because the sets, lighting and locations all work pretty well. The murder scene at the start of the movie is quite nasty, and the black and white photography looks pretty classy. But, oh my god what really skewers the movie is the terrible acting. Mostly by the actress playing the central character of Emmaline, who cannot seem to manage more than about 2-3 expressions. Most notably in the pivotal murder scene near the beginning, the movie's title suddenly blasts onto the screen over freeze-frame of her face, which holds an expression of nothing more than sleepy disinterest. I think the director could have at least shouted at her to look a bit more...well... traumatised! She maintains this lack of emotional depth throughout the rest of the movie...there's just nothing going on in there, despite the character supposedly going through the agony of trying to recall her memory, you'd think she was just wondering what flavour of ice cream to buy at the local store.
The rest of the cast do little better. Emmaline's love interest Craig is acted slightly better then her, but he's very one-dimensional, sadly he plays in a lot of scenes with a work assistant, who does an acting job equally as bad as Emmaline. Nearly all the rest of the cast are equally poor. All of this would probably sink the film, but for the fact that it has a twist ending that I did not guess. The revelations in the last few 10-15 minutes of running time were good fun, and it worked for me, even if a lot of inconsistencies that came before it are never explained.
Currently not officially available on DVD or Bluray, you'll have a hard job finding a clear print of this to watch. I had to make do with a pretty poor copy. A good clean up and polish might even make this marketable again as a curiosity. But please don't believe any review that describes it as "maybe better than Psycho"!