BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

FountainPen Absolute waste of time. I had the feeling the "story" was being written as each scene was shot. Dull, dismal, boring, banal, with no redeeming features. Colin Firth was a waste. Mena Suvari played the usual wide=eyed gamin role. How does an abortion such as this film EVER get released? The producers must have realised early on that it was a DUD (to be extremely polite). Or are they in fact a bunch of retards who actually thought this movie had some merit? Hopeless, awful.

yoga-1-996510 I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe in consequences. How's this for an idea: take a generic male character, give him some sympathetic circumstances, slowly add "character" by revealing at a snail's pace nothing but at best irritating instincts and characteristics, then pull a long-telegraphed whammy by undoing the sympathetic circumstances, then have him do something truly disgusting, then have him watch some TV.Or, how about this: just film your own bowel movement? Same difference, and you could have saved us a lot of time.There is not one positive thing to say about this experience, other than I'm hoping it will prove to have been carcinogenic, and that mercifully I'll die soon and the painful memory of having sat through this visual bile along with it. I understand that studios have budgets they have to spend, or they'll get smaller budgets the next year. Dear BBC: next time, buy crack with your end-of-fiscal-year surplus. Do something at least plausibly worthwhile with your cash. How they found a Colin Firth lookalike to sleepwalk through this tripe begs the question as to why they would want to in the first place.

Amy Adler Ben (Colin Firth) is in a coma at a London hospital. He wakes to find that his wife has died in the same horrific accident that injured Ben. Not only that, the funeral is long over and there is only a video of the proceedings. Needing to change his life completely, Ben finds an apartment in a former hospital undergoing renovations. In the basement, there is an empty morgue, where patients who died were kept until arrangements were made. Ick. Overseeing some of the remodeling is Ben's neighbor, Charlotte (Mena Suvari). She is young and beautiful, a good distraction for Ben. But, something is amiss. For one, Ben thinks he spies his ex-wife, Elisa (Naomie Harris) on the street, more than once. Well, well. Also, a detective comes to see Ben, telling the widower he is a possible suspect in the murder of a singer. Well, well, again. Ben is also seeing a psychiatrist, hoping to work his way through his grief. But, is Ben a murderer, going crazy or what? This is quite a good thriller, not especially bloody, but more of mental horror show. Firth is terrific as the conflicted, complex Ben, while Suvari, Harris and all of the other cast members are great, too. The old hospital setting, complete with plastic, remodeling curtains that sway and the basement morgue, is absolutely creepy. Script and direction are appropriately full of twists and turns. However, the ending is a bit confusing, resulting in this viewer having to read others' plot summaries to fully understand its meaning. If you like thrillers and/or Firth, do add a little "Trauma" to your life soon.

patrick powell Trauma is a rather curious film which promises a great deal, seems to deliver, but which, on reflection, doesn't really deliver at all. In a nutshell, Colin Firth is the husband who had a crash in which his wife apparently dies, and who can't come to terms with her death. The backdrop to this personal tragedy is the mystery of the murder of a pop star who was beaten up, stabbed and Lord knows what else, and whose body is found in a canal in East London. There is, at first, no apparent link between that murder and the apparent death of Colin Firth's wife, but slowly links seem to be made, and by and by it is suggested that it seems our Colin might well have done the deed. Apparently. And the words 'apparent' and 'apparently' are rather apt here, because nothing is quite as it seems. Colin, lucky chap, is adopted by pert Charlotte, played by Mena Suvari, who is the landlord's daughter and who tells Colin that she is keeping an eye on the place, a former hospital which is - again apparently - being converted into East London yuppie apartments. (Incidentally, no other tenants are ever seen and nor is there any evidence that building work is ongoing. The old hospital resembles both an abandoned building site and a skip.) And the impression is also given that Charlotte merely the figment of grief-stricken Colin's imagination. And so on. It is, in fact, rather futile to embellish on that resume, because much of it is irrelevant. Why, for example, the emphasis on Colin's near-obsession with ants? Well, the simple answer is that such an inexplicable obsession plays rather well in a horror film. Why the suggestion that much of what is happening is all in Colin's imagination? And how to explain Charlotte's apparent - that word again - naivety? Anyone over the age of 16 who has spent more than a week in any city will know that such trust as she demonstrates is lethal - and naturally she ends up dead. Then there's the slightly spooky janitor who had previously worked in the hospital before conversion work started and who has a thing about the hospital morgue in the basement. What is his role? Well, it is simply to be the film's slightly spooky janitor, because such characters are never out of place in a horror film. There is, however, far, far less to him than meets the eye. The odd thing is that while writing this I'm feeling ever so slightly guilty, rather like the guilt you feel after admitting that the ugly sister you're rather fond of is really no looker. You see, although from the off Trauma is rather baffling, it has the knack of drawing you in, you go with it, you are intrigued as to where it will all end. And that means Trauma has already achieved a lot, lot more than any number of oh-so-formulaic Hollywood schlock on far bigger budgets - you know the kind of thing: I Saw You Scream Last Summer VI. In fact, despite my carping, Trauma can more than hold its own. Its difficulty is, I think, that it sets itself higher standards, and although it achieves far more than the formula stuff, it doesn't quite get to where it wanted to. I am prepared to accept that it was filmed on a shoestring and on location, but that is no criticism. Clever cinematography makes a virtue of the fact that the only set the producers could come up with was the old hospital being converted into yuppie flats, and that cleverness with using limited resources also means that it looks a lot more expensive than I'm sure it actually cost. Elsewhere in reviews of this film you'll get the usual IMDb extremes from this being quite possibly the best horror film ever made to lamentations that the viewer spent more than a milli-second of rubbish such as this. One reviewer even goes as far as to claim that Trauma is definitive proof that we Brits simply can't make horror films. But ignore both extremes, for despite its faults, its illogicalities, its short-changing in the facts department and a rather over-wrought denouement, Trauma is a lot better than many of its Yankee rivals. But it isn't quite as good as it might have been. You'll only be really disappointed if you go along hoping for the usual expensive, glossy dross which Hollywood can turn out by the mile. It is a lot better than that.