If you saw the trailers for “Traumatika” (2024) then go to the movies, you may wonder if you are in the right theater since it starts in 1910 on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, but you are, and it is only one of the many unexpected things that happen over the course of an economical eighty-seven minutes. Jumping forward to Pasadena, California in 2003, rewinding back to 2002, then returning to 2003 before resting in 2023, it is a wild, twisted ride to find out what happened to Mikey (Ranen Navat) and his mom, Abigail (Rebekah Kennedy), who appears to be possessed while simultaneously a demon Volpaazu (Maxime Rancon, who also wears a second hat as cowriter) lurks in the shadows looking like an original recipe Nosferatu. When Sheriff Miller (AJ Bowen) intervenes, it is only the beginning of the Reed family’s tale of woe. While it is hard to differentiate between whether the filmmakers stacked the deck with human venality and supernatural scares to make it work, it is undeniable that the nasty combination results in a satisfying, surprising, shocking, satirical and side-splittingly sardonic tale that will make traditional and psychological horrors fans delighted. If you find child abuse disturbing, it would probably be a good idea to skip this movie because without the demon, it is hard to stomach. Trigger warning for sexual abuse survivors. “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) is comparatively tasteful.
To really talk about “Traumatika” would require spoilers, and it is better to go in as blind as a bat to get more bang for your buck. There is objectively a monster in the form of Volpaazu. Volpaazu likes to possess people, abuse children, kill them and acts like a contagion that gets transmitted with black goo. He comes in an artifact like an evil jin, but instead of a lamp, it is a metallic bird sculpture. This demon must take a page from “The Nun” (2018) and want to multitask through possession and have its own corporeal form. While it is ambiguous, the first person possessed in the twenty-first century seems as if they likely did not need any otherworldly help to torture kids, and the only thing that Volpaazu added to the mix was murder and messiness thus proving that cleanliness is next to godliness.
If you do not like that reading, then people who do horrible things to children put the blame on an evil figure though the relief of blaming a scapegoat is minimal. An alternate reading is that hurt people hurt people. Sometimes victims of abuse turn into abusers. As a victim and an abuser, it is easier to rationalize that the devil made them do it than that their soup to nuts Christian trappings are a veneer for wickedness. It does not hurt that many of the scenes occur on Halloween. “Traumatika” is a holiday movie! If Dr. Loomis appeared, it would work. In many ways, “Traumatika” feels as if it is the unofficial successor to “Halloween” (1978) that Rob Zombie wanted his 2007 reboot to be. (Side note: Rob Zombie’s version is better than the David Gordon Green reboot.)
Instead of Dr. Loomis, in the last act, “Traumatika” delivers Karen Novak (Susan Gayle Watts), an exploitive, conscience-free, callous true crime host who does not care about anything except ratings and staying on top. An episode from her Halloween special plays on a laptop throughout the 2023 section. She is so horrible, and I love her. If “Traumatika” turns into a franchise of supernatural meets psychological thriller stories where she suddenly pops up to cover it, I would be thrilled. She may be the most evil human being of them all, but I also love her because in a senseless world, she makes sense. As the kids says, Watts ate and left no crumbs. She really mentally said to herself, “Fuck final girl. I’m going to be the final woman, and no one is poaching my guest.” In a day and age where so many movies have characters wringing their hands with angst over getting famous and staying on top, she really is unbothered. Karen was a nice palette cleanser.
Also Sheriff Miller may be my favorite law enforcement official in cinematic history. He was not buying anything that Abigail was selling and had his gun drawn ready for that paperwork. If it was not his job to investigate the 911 call, he would never have gone into that house. The best part was that when he realized something was up, he reported it immediately and asked for backup instead of leaving a mystery for everyone else.
The acting style in “Traumatika” feels very late twentieth century where everyone is a good actor, but the actors make their performance a bit over the top to fit the genre. It is naturalistic, and it is not ham fisted. Even when they are chewing the scenery or their coworkers literally, it feels more in the vein of Ted Levine than amateurish. It is naturalistic until it is time to get demented. The trailers make this film seem cheap, but it is absolutely not. Everything feels well thought out and stylized upon closer examination. Because this film is about child abuse, director and cowriter Pierre Tsigaridis tells the 2003 portion of the story from Mikey’s point of view; thus, the shaky cam footage displayed in the trailer for the public. If that style is a dealbreaker because Dramamine intake seems like an undesirable price to go to the movies, maybe reconsider. It is the most trite aspect of the film, but worth the slog.
Tsigaridis borrows elements from “The Exorcist” (1973), which is a given in a demon possession film, “Skinamarink” (2022) in the way that strewn, idle children’s toys and outdated tube televisions ooze the vibe of child neglect and loss of innocence, and the aforementioned “Halloween” in the way that the Reed family tale plays out. Because of which elements he chose to use and how he combined them, the finished product feels fresh and will keep moviegoers guessing. Also the cowriters denouement strips the evil down to quotidian horror almost to dispel the freakiness so when you leave, it is on more of a high note instead of the pit of stomach dread and hopelessness of “Hereditary” (2018), which feels like a distant cousin of this film, but instead of mental illness, the deleterious effects of child abuse creates the family bonds.
Don’t let the trailer fool you. “Traumatika” is one of the few movies that can balance supernatural and psychological horror without annoying purist horror fans, jump around different eras and tell the story from multiple perspectives without losing viewers. While there are plenty of dumb characters, there are also plenty of smart ones, including those who deserve to live but don’t. While the story is disturbing, exploitive and proliferates in armchair psychology that probably is untrue, it is also a solid movie that can juggle a lot of balls without dropping any.
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Who was little Mikey stabbing?
