Film Reviews

Trauma

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Brenda Fricker
• Details: UK/ 97 mins/ (18s).

Ditching his staple diet of rom coms and period adaptations, Colin Firth plays against type with very shoddy results in this incomprehensible thriller. Ben (Firth) wakes up in intensive care after a deadly car crash in which his partner (Naomie Harris) appears to have lost her life. Elsewhere, one of the most popular singers in Britain has been murdered. As Ben gets out of hospital, however, and starts to piece his life together, he soon realises that he may be coming under suspicion for the death of the singer, as well as wrestling with his own demons regarding the crash. His new next-door neighbour Charlotte (Mena Suvari) inexplicably decides to help him out, which leads Ben into the church of a psychic sort (Fricker, slumming it) and to the attentions of a driven copper.
One of those rare enough films that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, Trauma is a collection of barely-there ideas and characters, which are thrown together in no discernible shape or pattern by its writer, Richard Smith, and director Marc Evans. Indeed, the latter showed a great deal of promise with the low budget horror concept My Little Eye a couple of years ago, but he's made a fatal misstep here. Unable to get to grips with the film, he allows not-very scary images to dictate at the expense of a dogged, involving plot. It looks fine, but that's about the best you can say for Trauma.

Review by Garreth Murphy